"Don't tell them New York City almost killed us again." - The Hold Steady

We got stuck in some crappy traffic in Connecticut, but even still we got to the city in under five hours. When we pulled up in front of K's apartment, she was outside with her roommate, who was eating Ben and Jerry's ice cream out of a carton without the aid of a utensil. We dropped our bags upstairs and headed directly to the subway. We went into Manhattan and walked over to the Empire State Building.

I hadn't been there in well over a decade, and neither the b.h. nor K had ever been. It is, as you might imagine, quite a popular tourist destination, and even at nearly midnight on a Wednesday, there were lines. None of us cared, though, because we had plenty to talk about and lots of people watching to do. My favorite thing about being in such a touristy place is listening to all of the different languages being spoken. The b.h. likes to play "Wher're they from?", where you try to guess people's nationality by appearance and then listen for what language they're speaking to see if you were right. Turns out that Germans were the easiest to spot. The Dutch mostly look just like people from New York (meaning that they have better fashion sense than we do), and the British looked the most like us. Our favorite people in line - we kept passing the same folks, because the lines wound around and around like they do in airport security (or, if you prefer, as I do, an amusement park) - were a British woman and her daughter. Her daughter was probably around ten years old, and she was obviously smart and very friendly and super happy to be there.

Just before the second set of elevators, we were forced through a line where we had our pictures taken. You could hear the photographer from a long way away:

"Cheese.... Cheese.... cheese...."

"You should totally hire that guy," said the b.h. My stomach turned at the mere thought of eating cheese again, but I laughed through the vomit in the back of my throat anyway.

Very few people actually wanted their picture taken, but we weren't given a choice. We arrived at the photographer to find a fake backdrop of the view we were about to see. The logic escaped me, but I saw that they suckered at least a couple of people into it. The three of us agreed to make stupid faces, since we knew we wouldn't be buying them anyway.

The second elevator ride was even less comfortable than the first, since it was totally full, but I was flanked by our British friends and the b.h., so I closed my eyes and thought of wide open spaces. The view was fantastic. The night was odd and misty, so we couldn't see a great distance, but in Manhattan you don't really need to. I wasn't exactly sorry that I couldn't see Jersey. Because of the weird weather, we would occasionally have gusts of steam, or fog, or clouds or some such. I was half expecting Batman to pop out at any moment, and I wondered if he would be descending to the 86th floor from the higher observation deck (which costs fifteen dollars more), or ascending from street level.

My least favorite thing about being with so many tourists is the creeping germophobia that always seems to come over me. Hand rails, fences, elevator buttons, and viewing machines. Virtually every surface likely touched by several hundred people an hour, if not more, and how often do you think they clean that stuff? Uh huh- that's right. Never. On the elevator ride down, I closed my eyes and thought of a giant bottle of hand sanitizer. I should mention that every person who we encountered working in the Empire State Building was polite and friendly, except for the cameraman, who was completely deadpan. When we got back to his post, he and an assistant were trying, carnival-barker style, to get people to purchase a copy of the photo he had taken earlier. I thought the better of our horrible face-making only when I saw the result - all eight by ten inches of it - plastered to a wall where everyone could see it. Egads.
We left in no particular direction, and soon found ourselves in Korea Town, which was convenient because we were quite hungry and one of K's favorite restaurants is there and open 24 hours.
The place had a grotto motif, two stories with one whole wall designed to look like rough, bare rock slabs. In between floors, a small platform jutted out. Said platform was carpeted in red and featured a white baby grand piano.
"I've never seen anybody play that thing," K lamented. "I guess I need to get here at a more civilized hour."
We sat at the same table K always gets seated in, with a clear view of both the platform and the main floor, which were completely empty. The b.h. got something big and meaty, and K ordered a couple vegetarian things for us to split.
The waiter returned a few minutes later with eight small dishes and three small empty plates.
"Which one is which?" I asked K when he left. I recognized the tofu and the kimchi, but there were several things that were unfamiliar.
"Oh, this isn't our dinner. These are just... snacks, I guess. They always bring this stuff."
We ate. The tofu was excellent, and I enjoyed both of the kimchi dishes, as well as the pickled turnip. I had nearly forgotten about the food we had ordered by the time it arrived. The fried kimchi pancake was the best thing by far. They also brought us a bean ice cream (sweet potato flavored, I think) each for dessert. It was delicious.

I had to visit the ladies' room before we left, and was surprised (and rather grossed out) to find a sign requesting that guests not put any paper in the toilet. Now, I am well aware of the damage that can be done to old, fragile plumbing by giant wads of t.p., or, gods forbid, feminine hygiene products, but I do not recall ever having been asked to put all paper in a wastebasket, and I was glad not to be the poor soul who had to empty said wastebasket. I left the bathroom and emerged into the hallway where I discovered a strange phenomenon: there was a very strong breeze, nearly a wind, coming down the hallway. As I came up the stairs from this hallway and into the main part of the restaurant, my hair was blowing like I was in a car going fifty miles an hour with the window down. But the front door wasn't open. Where was this wind coming from? I never found out. Weird.

We got back on the subway and were at K's apartment in short order. The b.h. and I each got a beer from the restaurant downstairs, and turned in.


Korea town, the baby grand, and the curious windtunnel effect of the restroom hallway.