Notes on a daytrip to Chinatown, New York City

  • YOU WAN HANBAG???
  • The North Face is the official outfitter to the population of Chinatown.
  • There are many worse ways to break your fast than at an authentic New York Dim Sum palace.
  • New York is still an armpit.
  • I’ll say this for it, though: unlike most cities, it’s actually pretty hard to get lost in Manhattan.  It must have been laid out by an obsessive-compulsive with a thing for right angles.  If you have a page of graph paper you have a map of Manhattan Island.
  • The subway, on the other hand, was designed by a sadist.  You want to go South?  Take the N, Q, W, or R lines.  You want to go North?  Take the N, Q, W, or R.  Absolutely no distinction is made at any point in the stations whether you are on the northbound or southbound sides.  And if you get it wrong, you have to leave and forfeit your fare.
  • Greenwich Village:  what’s the deal?  Turns out it’s just a bunch of rowhouses around a tiny park overrun with horrid little dogs and their owners.  I thought there were supposed to be hipsters and bohemians or something.
  • Peep shows, how quaint.  Seriously, who leaves their house to watch porn now that we have the interwebs?
  • I want a Chinese bakery near my house.
  • I kept wanting to point and laugh at the gawking out-of-towners, only to remember I was one of them.
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2 Comments

  1. Greenwich Village had bohemians in, like, the 20’s. Now it has very rich people with occasional oases of bohemianism, like the White Horse Tavern and HB Studios. Even the East Village isn’t for hipsters anymore…they all had to move to the outer boroughs. Though there might be a few left in the way, way northern tip, hiding out for dear life.

    You don’t actually have to forfeit your subway fare if you screw up the trains…you just have to make sure you get off the train at a transfer point so that you can go up and over without exiting.

    The lack of north-south thing is a pain, but once you get used to thinking of the Bronx as north and Brooklyn or Queens as South, it’s not so bad. I still think the NYC subway kicks the Metro’s ass in every possible way, I have to say. Except maybe cleanliness, and I’ll sacrifice that for the other stuff.

    1. You don’t actually have to forfeit your subway fare if you screw up the trains…you just have to make sure you get off the train at a transfer point so that you can go up and over without

      Our problem was that we had a bus to catch and didn’t actually have the time to ride to an xfer point and then back up.

      I still think the NYC subway kicks the Metro’s ass in every possible way, I have to say. Except maybe cleanliness, and I’ll sacrifice that for the other stuff.

      Which Metro? If you’re talking about Baltimore’s pathetic excuse, sure. But I’ve always loved the DC metro. The vaulted architecture, the sleek clean trains with their refined whine, the subtle audio cues, the flashing lights along the platform as a train is arriving – all of these things still make me feel like I’m entering THE FUTURE whenever I board the DC Metro.

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