New York, New York

8/12/10

Location: New York City


I’m back in the DMV after a amazing, whirlwind weekend in the City that never sleeps, the Big Apple, the Empire City: New York City.


I just loved New York City. It was unlike any place I’d ever been. It’s astounding to look up and see only towering skyscrapers glinting in the sunlight as they stretch seemingly into the clouds. I suppose New Yorkers may find the endless stretch of golden and green fields, largely void of trees and buildings, in North Dakota strange, though. New York is all at once glitzy Hollywood glamorous, the poster child for capitalism and pursuing the American Dream, hard and disenchanted, and a melting pot of countless cultures and ethnicities.


I traveled to NYC with my best friend and boyfriend of nearly three years, Jake. He had never been to the City either, so it was another travel adventure for us. We also traveled together to D.C. for Obama’s inauguration in 2009. We used Greyhound/Peter Pan buses to travel to and from D.C. 


Pros: It was cheap, and we got to add Delaware and New Jersey to our list of states we’ve been in. I am also a master planner and had a folder of maps and guides and a lunch bag of Rice Krispie treats, Sun chips, sandwiches, and Gatorade for the trip. Cons: Encountered thee worst customer service in the world and Jake got dripped on by the air conditioning system for over four hours. Anyway, the entirety of our time actually in the City was absolutely perfect and here are the sights we saw, and my impressions of them.


Times Square: An advertising and electricity overload that both alarms and delights your senses. I’ll never forget that as we were exiting West Side Story at the Palace Theater and saw the light pouring in from the glass doors. “It can’t possibly still be light outside,” Jake said. “It’s past 11.” It was indeed light outside, but the sun had set long ago. The lights literally made it feel like it was midday, all flashing with color and calls to buy clothing, alcohol, technology products, and food. Another foreign thing to me was seeing people who look just like me walk by and hear an unfamiliar, exotic language. I can’t begin to count how many different ethnicities and cultures I encountered in Times Square, and it just blew my mind every time I saw someone that looked like me, walked like me, just might be me, but didn’t speak the same language as me. Maybe that’s naïve of me to say, but perhaps that’s just what I was before I strolled into the melting pot that is New York City.

Central Park: To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much when we went to Central Park. I more or less thought, “So they have a park in the middle of all the skyscrapers. Good for them, at least they have some trees left to look at.” Central Park is trees, but it is more than that. It is sprawling 770 acres of fairy tale beauty. Our visit centered around “The Pond,” a body of water home to a lot of ducks, lily pads, and a gorgeous old ivy-covered bridge. It truly is an oasis.

21 Club/West Side Story/rooftop bars/Empire State Building (aka the best birthday I’ve ever had): For my birthday, my boyfriend really outdid himself. He planned it all, so he get’s the credit for the best birthday I’ve ever had and probably ever will have, since it’s all downhill after 21 for birthdays. We got all dressed up in black and silver started out with dinner at the 21 Club. The 21 Club is a former Prohibition-era speakeasy, is known as N.Y.’s favorite club, and is seen in pop culture favorites like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sex and the City, and Wall Street. It is also where every President since FDR has dined besides George W., and where Chelsea Clinton celebrated her 21st birthday. It was very, very cool. Besides not knowing what gazpacho soup was (oops), the food was delicious and I had my first legal drink—a cool pink Cosmo. Afterward, we took in the tragic and heartbreaking, yet dazzling and lively West Side Story on Broadway. It was Jake’s first musical and he loved it. I also think he enjoyed drinking his beer out of a sippy cup. Then, we hit up so swanky rooftop bars in the city, like 230 and Fifth. Finally, we decided to head up the Empire State Building at around 1:30 in the morning. We rode the elevators up the 86th floor observatory and were dazzled by the multi-colored lights heavily sprinkled on the landscape below us. It was the cherry on a top of a fantastic birthday in the Big Apple.

Ground Zero: The next day, August 7, we went to Ground Zero. The site itself was as saddening as I expected because the site was completely surrounded by chain link fence and the outside of the fence was covered with photos of One World Trade Center, also known as Freedom Tower. One World Trade Center is currently under construction and when completed, will be the tallest building in the United States. All we could see over the fence were red cranes and other bright yellow construction equipment. The fence posters said One World Trade Center will be completed in just a few years, but it doesn’t look like there is much done yet. What was sobering was going to the Twin Towers Tribute Center. There are recordings and videos from survivors of the attacks and surviving members of families that were forever changed on 9/11. There was a large fiberglass model of the Statue of Liberty that was placed by Ground Zero just days after the attacks. No one knows who put it there, but it was soon coated in photos of loved ones lost, ID badges and memorabilia from the site, American flags, candy, and more. That was my favorite image from the Tribute Center—seeing the Statue of Liberty with her arm held high, and coated with symbols of hope, love, and strength. The Tribute Center also had a model of what Ground Zero will look like in a few years: One World Trade Center and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum complete, overlooking two square pools of clear water with 30’ waterfalls around the perimeter, surrounded by trees and flowers.

The Financial District: After Ground Zero, we went to check out Wall Street and New York’s Financial District. My dad is a commodities broker and the economy and everything that goes along with it—the traders in suits with briefcases, the bustling trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the flashing ticker of numbers at the bottom of every news channel—has always mystified and intrigued me. Jake and I saw the NYSE, the American Express tower, 1 World Financial Center, and Trump Tower. 

Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island: On Sunday, our last day in the City, we took a Liberty Harbor Cruise that went by the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, Brooklyn, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. It was a gorgeous summer day, literally with the sun shining with all its strength and only light clouds in the sky. I didn’t bring sunscreen with me to New York and ended up getting my first sunburn in years—ouch. Anyway, the cruise was great. We got to see the City from a different perspective—by water—and it looked completely different. You can really imagine that immigrants coming through Ellis Island over 100 years ago would picture New York as a haven of prosperity and a bright future. With the buildings standing tall and gleaming with the sun shining on the water, it kind of looks like an urban paradise. The Statue of Liberty basically looks like it does in pictures: the giant turquoise Lady Liberty holding her torch up to the heavens. Ellis Island was more striking—I’m sure I have seen it in pictures before, too, but I don’t remember those very strongly like I do the Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island shows its age, and the main building looks both foreboding and like a pretty gingerbread house at the same time. It just stuns me to think about all the people who processed through there and all of the different dreams, hopes, worries, and fears.

It’s strange to think that I only have about a week left in the District and then I’ll be on a plane back to North Dakota. I’m ready to go home. I have loved D.C., and felt I’ve made the most of my time here. I’ve explored and experienced so much in the capital and surrounding area, and I also traveled to New York. As I said in the last entry, it’s been transformative—I feel like I’ve gained new perspectives, as I always do in new places, but I feel like I’ve really grown as a person and feel more confident in myself, my desires, and my abilities. After my May seminar, I felt a little dazed, a little unsure of what I saw and how it affected me. Our group talked about how we would be affected by the trip weeks, months, and even years down the road, and this summer gave me time to process things I didn’t have time or energy to before. Also, living in D.C. with only one person I knew from home and working in a place dramatically different from anywhere I’ve worked before (well, the Hill is kind of dramatically different from where most people work) made me more independent and self-reliant. I’m also much more poised and self-assured about what I’m capable of and what I want out of life.  That’s all long-term lens, though. Right now, what I want is simple: home in North Dakota.