The decision was a bit last minute - 2 weeks in advance - because LuAnn signed up for classes at Durham Tech that start on Aug 19. Also, I was sort of in between projects at work.
I tried to contact my friend Rehan, who lives in Manhattan. But he seems to have disappeared again. Yo, Rehan, if you're reading this, send your friends your new e-mail address!
We bought an Apple iBook the weekend before, for various reasons: LuAnn's hard drive crash, to play with Mac OSX, to be able to do Google searches while watching TV, and also because North Carolina had a Tax-Free Weekend the weekend before our trip. But it was also great to be able to take our little Apple to the Big Apple.
But the Apple was a lemon. The battery wouldn't charge. On the Thursday before the trip, the Apple store in Durham told us they could order a battery, and it could be here by Monday or Tuesday. We got the address of the Apple store in SoHo instead.
First stop: the Apple store. It is labeled "Station A"; you wouldn't know it from the street but for a small metal cut-out Apple logo hung over the sidewalk. Inside, it's surprisingly large. Two stories. So, we took a seat at the Genius Bar upstairs under the picture of Feynman, and waited. And waited. Great way to spend vacation time, huh? They ordered a battery for us. It would be in by Tuesday at the latest. They would give us a call. Okay. To be continued.
Meanwhile, my watch went blank. At first, I thought it was another battery problem, but when the battery goes dead, the watch gradually fades and slows down. Instead, it went blank, came back, showed the correct time, or 7:77:77, whichever it felt like. Well, that's what I get for cleaning out the crud from a watch I've worn on my wrist almost every day for 17 years. The crud must've been holding it together. Over the course of the week, however, the watch improved. I think the New York city crud must have gotten into it. Now that the vacation is over, the watch is running fine. I will never clean it again!
The computer, the watch... this was foreshadowing.
After the Apple Store, we went to Times Square. Everything is in neon, including the Police Department, and the subway signs. We were dazed, but that could be partially attributed to all the traveling. It's like being in Las Vegas, except we've never been to Las Vegas, so we don't really know that. Plus, there's a Hershey's store. Mmmm, chocolate. But just American chocolate.
Back at the hotel, we discovered that we had a wireless internet connection simply called "linksys". We still don't know who provided it. It could have been the hotel. Or a local restaurant (there were two Starbucks nearby). Or it could have been coming from one of the apartments across the street. If you have a wireless hub, learn how to secure it... Ignorance of technology is no excuse. Not knowing where it was coming from, of course, we were careful not to type our bank account passwords or anything sensitive like that. It came in handy; I highly recommend having Internet access on a trip to New York.
So we returned to Times Square. We browsed Virgin Records, which is by far the largest record store I've ever seen. Then we went to Toys 'R' Us, the largest toy store I've ever seen. It has a 3-story ferris wheel in it. And a huge Statue of Liberty made out of Legos -- I enjoyed that Statue of Liberty about as much as the real thing. Then we rushed over to FAO Schwarz, because my sister recommended it as a huge toy store, so we expected it to be larger, but it was about the same size, just different. More emphasis on Star Wars, for example, and less on Legos. Naturally I liked the Toys 'R' Us better, but I wouldn't fault anyone for having the opposite opinion.
After that we spent some time in Central Park.
Then we went to Shea Stadium. The Mets are not in as much demand as the Yankees. Oddly enough, they won. LuAnn was rooting for the San Francisco Giants. I wasn't rooting for anyone in particular. Barry Bonds hit two home runs.
The iBook Battery, continued: We went to the Apple store again, and did our time at the Genius Bar. After a long time spent waiting, annoyed at spending vacation time for this, we finally got our battery and popped it in. Then, just as the fellow who helped us walked away, I flipped the iBook over to open it up and test it, and one of the rubber feet caught on the edge of the counter, popped out, bounced on the floor, and rolled under the "Employees Only" door! I couldn't believe it. And nobody else saw it, not even LuAnn. That took a few minutes to explain and fix.
That evening, we went to the Comedy Cellar. Our seats were perfect: front row, but far enough to the side to not get picked on by the comedians. The lineup was Dave Attell, Russ Meneve, Jeff Ross, Ben Bailey, Robert Kelly, Dean Obeidallah, and Steve Byrnes, but some really famous comedians sometimes show up unannounced. In our case, Chris Rock showed up. He was the worst one (in my opinion, not LuAnn's). That was partly because some of his references to pop culture went over my head, but mainly because he was just trying out new material for the MTV Music Awards. We were his guinea pigs for about an hour. The comedian right after Chris Rock was the best: Ben Bailey.
So, we got off to a late start. The plan was to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But we got out after 3pm, and had lunch first, and the museum closes at 5:30pm on Thursdays, so we decided to put it off until Friday, when the museum is supposed to be open until 9pm. Unfortunately, we didn't have a good Plan B.
At about 4pm, we were sitting down on a bench in a small square outside the Museum of Radio and Television, looking at a map and deciding whether to do that, or tour the NBC studios, or something else, when I began to notice that the number of people was increasing. I also noticed that they didn't look like tourists. They looked like business people. Then I overheard a woman say to another, "The whole block is out."
Ah, so that was it. A power outage. But that probably meant we wouldn't get much out of the Museum of Radio and Television or NBC studios. We decided to go to the top of the Empire State Building instead. So we walked half a block back to the subway station, but it was pitch black inside. The Empire State Building was only about 10 blocks away anyway, so we decided to walk it.
By the time we got to the Empire State Building, it was pretty obvious it would be closed. We had heard on some portable radios along the way that this was definitely not a terrorist attack, but I began to think that on the off chance that it really was, standing under the Empire State Building might not be the brightest idea.
Then we walked halfway back to the Empire State Building, to the Coliseum bookstore across the street from the NY Public Library and Bryant Square, because they apparenly had a generator, and therefore A/C. After a couple of hours of browsing books and listening to the radio on their sound system, it became apparent that the power might not come back soon, and it may be quicker to walk 50+ blocks back to the hotel than to wait in the line for the restroom.
It was getting dark, but we stood in line for our supper (hotdogs). The street vendors were very busy that night. Then we began our long trek back. It was mostly lit by car headlights. And we were not the only ones. The sidewalks were full as we made our way back to 94th Street & Broadway.
The hotel was dark. People were lying around in the lobby. We decided to climb the stairs. The staircase was manageable, because there were windows. When we got to the 10th floor, however, we found it pitch dark. We waited a few moments for our eyes to adjust, but as far as I could tell, there were no photons in there. I remarked on the aptness of my T-shirt, Dixie Caverns, but that I didn't realize I'd be spelunking that day. Finally, LuAnn remembered that her watch lights up. With our eyes adjusted, it really lit up the whole floor. We found our way to the room, and to our great relief, the electronic door lock worked. It was 10pm. We went to bed immediately -- we were exhausted. We slept with the windows open.
Thus we got an early start to our day. We had breakfast and immediately walked (the subways still weren't running) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it was closed, due to the blackout. We tried to go to the Museum of Natural History, but same deal. We sat on a bench for a while to discuss Plan C.
We walked to Riverside Park, and then took an M5 bus down to Wall Street. There we saw the famous bull statue, walked down Wall Street, and then walked to the Staten Island Ferry. That's a good way to see the Statue of Liberty for free.
On the way back to the hotel, we got off the bus and saw Grand Central Station. It was big, but not very crowded -- many of the trains still weren't running.
That night, we saw an improv act at Upright Citizens Brigade.
We took the subway back to Times Square. Power was restored, but some of the fancier signs still weren't rebooted. We went to the TKTS booth and got tickets for "Cabaret". Our decision to see "Cabaret" was largely due to the fact that we went to TKTS before we went to an ATM. (Note: take loads of cash to the TKTS booth. They don't take credit cards.)
After "Cabaret", we went to the Empire State Building again, but it was still closed.
That night we went to CBGB. It was an all girl-band night. The tagline for the night was "a night of chicks, sticks, and picks". We got there just before Lady Unluck set up. They were good. Good enough that we suffered through the next band and heard some of the one after that.