New York City, #1
This is my last week in NYC! I wish I had posted on this blog earlier. Now I have to go back in my memory and recall all the AMAZING things that happened over the summer! When I got here in May I probably looked quite naïve. I didn’t know how to navigate the subway or how to find my way around New York neighborhoods. Now I pretty much know my way around Manhattan. Armed with my trusty map, I can find my way no matter where I am!
The key, however, is not to pull out your map, lest you look like a tourist. Tourists are abhorred in Manhattan and I’m starting to understand why. It’s nearly impossible to walk through the Times Square area without seeing huge groups of people standing around snapping photos. I mean, it’s to be expected – it is Times Square, after all – but sometimes you have to walk through Times Square to get where you need to go.
The things that usually impress people about NYC didn’t really impress me that much. We (myself and some other Duke in New Yorkers) went to Times Square our first night here, and I didn’t even know that it was Times Square! I was looking around like “where is it?” It just looked like downtown Chicago to me. What I think is cool about New York is that there are so many neighborhoods in so little space, that you can run into anybody anywhere, and that there are so many hidden treasures around every corner.
Example #1 of how you can run into anybody anywhere: three of us went to a (free!) comedy club called the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. It stars Amy Poehler from Saturday Night Live, and the performance was great. I ran into a friend of a friend, a Duke alum, just standing in line waiting to get in. There are Dukies all over the world!
Example #2 of how you can run into anybody anywhere: On the first day (yup, the first day!) of my internship, I got the chance to go to a book release party where Steve Harvey, the famous comedian, was in attendance. I was really excited!
Examples of hidden treasures in NYC: AURA THAI. MANDOO BAR (not a real bar, it’s a Korean dumpling house). MEE. PINKBERRY. Please check out these restaurants if you ever come to NYC. They’re wonderful.
I’ve been able to do so many cool things this summer! Pizza in Brooklyn. Walking the Brooklyn Bridge (both ways, to Brooklyn and back!) Performing poetry at a street fair in Harlem (best memory of the summer). Going to a jazz club. Hanging out in Central Park. Going to tons of museums (the Met, the MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Museum of Natural History). And I haven’t even started to tell you about my internship and Duke in New York itself! Stay tuned.
Ikee G.
