Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The Night of the Burger

After waking up refreshed, I start the mundane task of shoving all my stuff back into the two suitcases I brought up here to move in to my sublet. Having three bags; one 75 lb big suitcase, one smaller carry-on, and my laptop bag, I opted for the more expensive taxi route instead of walking 15 blocks with that stuff, figuring out the semantics of dealing with the turnstiles, taking the N/W down to 8th St, then walking another 6 blocks or so. Of course, the problem with being in Astoria is I had no idea where the yellow taxi-cabs where.

I call up one private taxi company and they're like "Dude, just find a yellow cab; it's gonna be a lot cheaper than going through us." Deterred, I start walking a few blocks with all my crap and it's very unpleasant. Luckily a car from one of those private companies pulls up and asks if I need a lift. I tell him I'm going downtown and he estimates that'd cost about $40. Now using several taxi fare estimators, I knew that if I got an official yellow taxi-cab, I'd pay about $25 plus tip. I figured I might find one on Steinway and Ditmars so I continue heading down that way.

Then another car pulls up and asks where I need to go. I tell him downtown on W 3rd st and he asks how much I want to pay. I tell him $30 and he says ok. Score! We start heading into town when I realize that I don't have that much cash on me. He tells me $28 is fine (that's all I had on me) meaning it'd be about the same as a yellow taxi (after tip). He takes me across the Queensboro Bridge and down FDR and we get to the East Village pretty quickly. He has a very thick accent, but we had some interesting conversations and I got his number if I ever needed a hired car in the future.

Getting up to the third floor of the walk-up was fun, but I managed ok, got in and took a nap. Looking at the free events website, I found out the NY Philharmonic was playing a free concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park so I figured I'd make the trip up there to check it out. I also look up where an ATM is and a good place for dinner. I opted for the Corner Bistro in the West Village, which has gotten some pretty good rave reviews about the burger there. Didn't see a picture of Regis there. It was a pretty good burger though.


Took the subway up to 59th St and entered Central Park wandering northwards until I hit the Great Lawn. And boy did I know when I hit the Great Lawn... It was PACKED. So many people. I mean the Great Lawn is pretty big and it was literally covered from end to end with people and then some. I walk up and down the paths made by the police barriers used to section off the lawn and finally settled for a tiny spot I could find right in the center of the lawn. The people in front of me seemed pretty nice and even offered me a cup of wine. Some other people came and were pretty annoying; they talked the entire concert (they didn't even pay attention to the concert at all). Why didn't they pick somewhere else to talk?




Anyway, a bunch of people came up to talk introducing the NY Philharmonic, including some people running for office and also Alec Baldwin. The concert went on for a while (maybe a little over 2 hrs). They had an interactive "choose your encore" thing where people could text their choice between two songs for the encore piece. Of course this made all the cell towers very busy in the vicinity, along with all the people trying to contact their friends to meet up. After the concert there was a very brief fireworks display and then a huge sea of humanity exited the park. Quite an experience. I headed back to my sublet and that's it. I'm here writing up these entries. I'll try and post pictures of my sublet soon.

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