For the first full day of my New York Trip I decided to get something to eat in the morning; I don’t normally eat breakfast at all but when you have a big day ahead of you, it kinda makes sense to. So then with a big day ahead of me I left my hotel up at like 8:30am.
Being in New York, I had to check out a bagel place and there happened to be one near me with high rating and volume rating called “Best Bagel & Coffee”, I mean, it’s pretty literal but as you can see from the photo, it was really super busy; lots of people waiting for there orders not shown here. This was like just before 9am.
The shop had tables and sit down spots but they were all taken so I had to take my order to go and eat on the street somewhere not busy. I ordered a bagel sandwich as they called it, this one pre determined to have Atlantic smoked salmon, regular cream cheese, red onions and tomato slices and I chose an everything bagel to be the vessel. This gigantic smoked salmon bagel and lox cost me I think over $16 or so, not exactly cheap since they really load it up with salmon but it was pretty damn good. The bagel itself was great and the salmon and toppings really worked, I never had this before with red onions and tomatoes and was surprised that it worked so well. I was pretty full just eating half of it so it was a struggle honestly finishing it all. I also ordered a coffee too since it was the ‘best’ after all. Would again, but maybe something cheaper and simpler sans the smoked salmon.
Alright bitches gotta see a nice boat; I start the day nice and early walking all the way to the Intrepid Carrier Museum which is like a 30 min walk on foot. I actually walked through neighborhoods that weren’t actually busy and low traffic with very little people around. But yea, I got here at about like 10am, as soon as the ship/museum opened.
I had brought tickets online in advance so getting in was smooth and easy no waiting in lines. The first thing I decided to go to was the top flight deck which showcased a whole bunch of aircraft from various time periods starting from WWII and up to modern times such as the F14 tomcat and some WWII bombers and such. I took alot of photos here but in the interest of slimming things down for this daily post, here is a nice photo of some planes and the control/command room/building. Noice.
In a separate building on the flight deck was a exhibit dedicated to the space shuttle USS Enterprise in which it was also there on display. It was cool. But after reading about it in the exhibit I can’t help but feel a little sad/bad for it because it was only named Enterprise because of intense lobbying/requests from Star Trek fans wanting it to be called that as the first space shuttle prototype. Which is kind of the most sad part, as the first prototype, it never actually went into space, it was only used for entry tests from the atmosphere and didn’t have the the full equipment built into it and was too expensive for it to but retrofitted to become a real shuttle once the space shuttle program took off. Sadge, it didn’t even go into space. Man, should have waited for bit later Star Trek fans…
Without any further context, this is me in the USS Growler, a nuclear submarine that is also parked right beside the carrier. It was cool. They only allow groups in at a time since it was so small and such. I happened to be the only outsider in a group that was there on school trip, bunch of high school students and there teachers jokes; a couple of parents I think too.
While I was in the sub I was literally the last guy at the end of the group but then all of a sudden this guy on the right popped up behind me and caught up to the rest of the school kids. I was like where did this guy come from? Inside the sub I soon found out that he was a parent of one of the kids in the group and that he was also a cop, oh shit, based on what he said and his hoodie. The way this guy talked and his son was the most stereotypical New Yorker accent I have ever heard, literally the “I’m walking here!” kind of slag tone that you only see in TV and movies from hooligan people. The reunion in the sub was kinda awkward since I don’t think the kid expected his dad to show up at all, since he said he was technically on duty ‘on call’ as he said. The kid was like, oh hi dad I didn’t expect you to see you here, probably having to modify his normal behavior and tone with his friends, it felt like something from a spider man movie or some shit. I saw them again in the gift shop where they were watching a loop of the first 5 or 10 minutes of Top Gun because of course they have to. “Look at this movie boy, this movie was so great it’s awesome. We should watch the whole thing sometime” as the boy is forced to stare at the video pretending to care. Movie shit man, shitt.
After a very eventful morning talking pictures of the insides of boats, subs and of planes like a little boy I was pretty tired and decided to make my way back to my hotel for a bit of rest and get something to eat on the way back. Very close to me was this random pizza place called Vito’s Pizza; had a pretty good rating too so why not.
Not sure if this was a franchise or not but it didn’t seem like it to me. They had also a good amount of slice variety and a decent amount of traffic too. Once again, this is what you would call a quality pizza place, not a dollar cheapo slice so most normal slices are $4-5 dollars and square like slices range from $4-6, considerably more expensive hmm.
The place had available seating but man, I was tired and carrying a bag of carrier goods, and for a November afternoon, this was pretty damn hot today so I decided to ask them for a box to take out and went back to my hotel to eat my pizza. I wasn’t sure if the hotel cleaning people were done yet as I asked them to clean the room but when I got to my floor, lucky me the cleaning lady had just finished my room and was working on the next, yay, I thanked her. As for the pizza, damn, shit is pretty good, I think this was even better than Pizza Supremo I had yesterday. Maybe it’s because I had a pepperoni this time and the grandma slice I got again was very different, with a lot more garlic, sauce, fresh herbs and bread texture very different. Both were crispy but the grandma square slice was even more crispy, almost focaccia like. Good shit would again.
After resting for like a half an hour after eating my pizza I knew I needed to get to my next location but man, I was still kinda tired and I didn’t want to walk all the way there like I did to Intrepid museum. I had two choices, use Uber like a lazy bastard or try to use NYC’s subway system. I checked the Uber cost to my location, $65; yea that’s not happening so I got up and went to the subway. I didn’t have to buy a metro card. All of the subway entrances have tap for like google/apple pay on your phone and all credit cards so damn man, it was so easy, I just used my visa and I was allowed in. Makes the Presto card system that we have at home in Toronto even more of a disgrace/piece of shit. My ride was only like 5 stops but it saved me like 20 minutes of time and alot of walking. Nice experience, feels like TTC but actually people use it and get off at multiple different stations.
Oh shit you know what’s going on here then. Yea boi, my next location was the MoMa or the Museum of Modern Art, an art museum full of hipster and modern art, you won’t see any Italian Renaissance or medieval paintings here that’s for sure. The place is huge with like 5-6 full floors of galleries and art/sculptures/installations. Very clean and modern. I believe the painting in the back is one of Jackson Pollock’s famous abstract pieces, yea I can kinda remember this shit.
Yea boi, Starry Night by mad lad Vincent Van Gogh. FGO servant represent. As you can imagine, there was s decent crowd around this painting being one of the most well known and famous paintings in the world. It’s probably MoMa’s best shit honestly.
Oh yea, I remember this one in some Art History textbook and shit; this is by Picasso, I can’t remember the name but it’s something like “Whores of the town” or something shit from Spanish or whatever. Yea, I remember this one; Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, yea google is nice. They had a lot of Picassos and even had a special exhibt showing shit from Picasso before he started getting into cubism with a different style, it was interesting.
Oh wow, this is Salvador Dalí’s most famous painting, the The Persistence of Memory with all the melted clocks and shit. Noice. It’s very small tho, much smaller than I thought it would be. This photo itself is kinda shit and blurry of the painting but that’s OK, the pose is a new one so that’s different. I mean I took like many selfies in front of this one but I like this one somehow, it kinda plays well with the theme of the painting and name if you will.
After spending like 3 or so hours at the museum looking at abstract artsy shit, I wanted to get something to eat. I originally wanted to go to Adel’s famous halal cart but the line was enormous, stretching the entire block from start to end. I walked by the original Halal guys cart, and this like was like four times it’s length. I have photos of it and the line but ultimately after waiting for like 15 minutes I knew this was going to be over an hour wait. As much as I wanted it, I cut my losses and went to my backup cart which I had marked from a youtube video that was also high rated. So I went to the Kwik Meal cart, no line up at all other than some white women who got there just before me taking this picture lol.
After about 5 or so minutes I got my order, a combo platter of chicken and lamb with rice and veg. Looks and tastes pretty good, and it was. They used real lamb, not like lunch gyro lamb like meat which is really good. This cost like $13 dollars flat so I think by halal cart standards a bit more expensive than usual, as most are like $10 or sub that. The quality of the meat was pretty good and the spices good too, not spicy at all but really fresh. Too bad I didn’t get to have Adels but maybe one day, not sure if I want to try again on this trip but we’ll see. Good shit, would have again.
After sitting down somewhere and eating my halal platter I went to NYC Kinokuniya for a little pre convention shopping and browsing. I mean, they are one of the sponsors of AnimeNYC and have a large booth based off maps of the layout. On the main floor is mainly normie stuff and mainstream books, with a slight hint of Japanese influence, but on the floor above it’s full on otaku anime goods shop lol. The floor below is for paper and stationary goods, which for some reason more regular Japanese books. In fact, the entire store itself has Japanese books and media as the majority which is kind of interesting.
They had some of the hololive merch that was to be sold at AnimeNYC tomorrow lol. I guess if you really want you could buy it now but they probably don’t have your size in stock if at all since I can only assume most of the stock is at that convention center now being unpacked. I think an interesting think about this store is that to be an employee you need to be able to speak and read Japanese, since a good chunk of the employees are Japanese I would assume and also deal with actual Japanese good/books/manga. I mean they all can speak English but they often yell and ask for stuff/questions in Japanese which is interesting. There was a black guy stocking shelves that was fully fluent in Japanese and a few white guys too. Wow.
After a long day, the store was going to close so I headed back to my hotel for the most part and prepared to write this post. Yea, tomorrow is when AnimeNYC begins, although it’s a shortened day, it’s still the opening and there is also the Hololive Suisei concert in the evening so I don’t know if I will be able to make a post in reasonable time but we’ll see. Busy day man, i’m tired.
Hope everything goes well tomorrow.