Adventures in Queens

So I'm sorry if this post looks a little strange, my laptop has come down with computer appendicitis and I've resorted to writing on my iPhone (first world problems, am I right?) I tried to fix my it myself, and now I have a broken laptop with a few keys missing and tech guts hanging out. Turns out, computer surgery is not my specialty. Big surprise there.

Braden and I decided to venture out to Queens to see the Queens Art Museum... And we made a stop at the 1964 World's Fair along the way.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon wondering the museum, which (among other awesome pieces) is the home to this giant panorama of New York City. All of the buildings in the 5 Burroughs is represented to scale... And they have a touchable representation on the side where you can run your fingers over the brownstones in Greenpoint to the Empire State Building in Midtown.

After the museum, we thought it'd be a great idea to hop on the subway and hop off at a new stop we've never seen before.

We found ourselves on Roosevelt Avenue - picked a random direction- and ended up eating the best plantain empanadas on this side of the border.

Well Queens... it's been great!

Life is too short for Kickball.

Hold up ya'll. It's time for a serious moment today. A few weeks ago, I was talking to one of my very best friends on the phone. She has known me for most of life... we met in second grade and became best friends the instant we figured out that we'd rather write plays and read novels than play kickball (seriously - that game is SO stupid).

On this particular night I was crying over a boy who really put a huge dent in my sense of self. First of all, it's embarrassing to admit that I would ever cry over a boy... but I guess it happens to even the toughest of us at some point, right ladies? (Oh shut up, don't lie. You've all been there.... Unless you have no heart, and in that case I'm just concerned for your blood flow situation). I've always prided myself on being so tough, and the fact that I let such an unimportant person make me feel like I was anything less than kick-ass is, in retrospect, ridiculous.

But back to the point. My friend, who has provided nothing but love and support throughout the entire crazy nauseating weird winding lurching truck on a corroding dirt road journey of my life so far - told me to stop. "You are NOT worthless. You are the example I use when someone needs a success story. You've had some really tough breaks - and look where you are now."

Okay, fine. She's right. I've had some roadblocks. But haven't we all? Haven't we all felt like giving up at some point and surprised ourselves when months later we were the happiest we've ever been? Weren't you glad that you didn't quit? We all know a person who's picked themselves up after an immeasurable setback. We all know someone who has figured it out when things were stacked against them. This world throws some crazy stuff at all of us.

People are amazing.

Perhaps the most miraculous thing about our world is the resiliency of the human spirit. We are adaptable, pliable; we can turn ourselves into whatever or whomever we need to be in order to survive. It is amazing how an individual can experience horrific circumstances and still find the strength to rise inthe morning, brush his teeth and begin a new day. A villain can smash our world into tiny fragments and we still figure out a way to collect all of the pieces and put them back together with the scotch tape and Elmer's glue that we found in our apartments' junk drawers.

These people are everywhere. They pass you on the street. They wait in line at the bank. They pour your French roast at the coffee shop and they return your change at the grocery store. He is waiting next to you at the bus stop. She sits behind you in your English class. You would never give them a second glance otherwise.

How do we do it? We have entire communities destroyed by hurricanes; many of our neighbors become ill. Yet we still find the strength within ourselves to keep moving and help the person next to us off her knees. We take our newly single friend out for a romantic comedy and chai lattes. We listen closely as our sisters tell us the second doctor's diagnosis. The human spirit itself adapts constantly to the environment and rises above and beyond disaster.

We are survivors.

Oh and that boy I cried about that night? He ended up to be nothing more than a small pinch of salt in the really awesome story that I'm creating. He'll find where he needs to be, I'm sure. But the world is at my feet, bitches.

Why I Hate Buses.

My hatred for buses did not begin in Chinatown or even in Brooklyn.

My hatred for buses began in Happy Valley, Pennsylvania... with the horrible Blue Loop.

Bloop: Vehicle of nightmares.

I developed my first aversion towards buses on the second day of Kindergarten. I'll never forget watching my mother's confused expression, the smile still wide on her face while her waving hand dropped as the yellow public school bus sped past my driveway. I had pulled my new floral baseball cap over my eyes and began to cry. Convinced that I would never see my mother again because the bus driver was taking me to a place filled with nightmares and cigarette smoke and keeping me in a room with all of her pet ferrets, five year old Lauren couldn't be consoled at the next bus stop down the street. The bus driver forgot I was still on the bus. I should have known then.

For real. Ew.

During my first three years at Penn State, I refused to ride the bus alone. Sure, I would take the bus at night with my friends while drunk students swayed and sang our favorite football cheers. Sometimes I could even be convinced to take it downtown if a few of my girlfriends convinced me the trek was too far for heels. But I never rode that terrible thing alone. I would hike in the snow for miles, inflicting a lot of unnecessary pain upon myself just to avoid that bus. "Freeze warning?! Only stay outside for 10 minutes at a time, you say? Whatever Weatherman! I will take breaks! I will thaw in coffee shops and regain feeling in my legs in lecture halls." DON'T tell me to ride that bus.

On a gloomy, overcast day in November, I walked toward my apartment as a drizzly, icy rain began to fall. I was at a building on campus that was almost a mile walk away from home. Up ahead, I could see the Blue Loop approaching the bus stop. Today would be the day! I would finally muster up the courage and get on that bus! Ride it all the way home! Ride in the warmth home to happiness!

I got on the bus and proudly sat in my seat. Girl conquers bus. Take that, bus.

I rode the bus that day for a few stops when I began to notice something was wrong. The driver was driving away from where I wanted to be going, and people were getting off at the stops, but no one was getting on. Strange, I thought. These people don't have the fiery courage that I have to conquer this unruly bus!

But suddenly, everyone was gone and the only person left on the bus with me was the driver. He drove away, away from the campus, away from downtown, away from anywhere I wanted to be and pulled into a parking lot. He turned off the bus.

What was this? Was he going to murder me? Was this finally the day I would be kidnapped and forced to live with a smoker and a house full of ferrets? I only had a minute to think about my inevitable ferret filled future because after a moment the bus driver turned around in his seat and gave me a brief look of jaded indifference.

And with that the man shrugged his shoulders, stood up, and got off the bus.

Oh what the heck.

WHAT? Seriously? I sat there for a few minutes, confused, wondering how my courageous bus trip and turned so terrible so quickly. Defeated, I got off the bus and walked an hour home in the cold Pennsylvania wind. When I got home that afternoon, my friends couldn't stop laughing as I told them my story while trying to thaw my red cheeks and ears. That day ruined it for me. The Bloop ruined it all.

__________________________

Three years later, I found myself in the Bronx riding the bus home one night with two of my coworkers. One of my coworkers had just started the job earlier that week, and we were giving her a tour of our site in the Bronx.

The bus was filled with loud people who were yelling in Spanish and an icy rain poured down the windows, blocking our view of the dark sidewalks of Tremont. We were pretty sure that we were going in the wrong direction, and I was pretty sure that I was going to die. I was going to die on this B40 bus somewhere in the Bronx next to this man clutching a chicken. That was the end for me. Y pollo.



We tried to ask for directions, and everyone started trying to answer our quiery all at once in Spanish and broken English. We rode along into the night deeper into the wrong direction. "It's not ALWAYS like this," my one coworker told the newer one as she looked around feverishly at the men wearing matching colored bandanas and the women bickering loudly about dinner. The old man clutched his chicken closer to his lap. The bus screeched to a halt and we lurched forward.

But she was lying. The bus is always like that.

Subway Chronicles: Episode 1

Some seriously strange things happen in the New York City Subway. I don't know what it is about those underground concrete tunnels, but they seem to really bring out the weirdo in some people. Most of the people who ride the trains have the same stoic, expressionless stare with glassy eyes that look at the advertisements without seeing them. I like to call this the "train face." Everyone who rides the subway has a train face. It's one of our only methods as New Yorkers to have a moment to ourselves... a piece of solitude in the subway car packed with dozens of other expressionless zombies. We need to pretend that we have space.

This subway ad scares me. No wonder everyone has to look elsewhere.

Last night, someone from Connecticut commented on New Yorkers' lack of social space. A stranger in public is very likely to come up to you and stand so close to you that your arms are touching and you can smell his Crush cologne (that stuff sucks, seriously, why?). Odds are, if you have lived in the city long enough, these intimate moments with strangers won't even cause a second thought. Apparently, outsiders are totally creeped out (GASP) by this and end up jumping away from said snuggly stranger, bumping into someone who then doesn't apologize or even glance at him, and then wonder to themselves why is everyone here so mean!?

Leave us alone! We have our train faces on.

No one here wants to talk to you. No one.

In fact, when someone speaks to you at all on the subway, it kind of freaks you out. Even harmless courteous gestures become shocking and suspicious. One day, during my old commute from Williamsburg, a strapping young lad asked me if I would like to take a seat instead of him. I was so dumbfounded that he broke the bleak silence on the 8am L train that I didn't even respond (stupid!) and sat down in the seat like a confused foreigner.

Where do these people come from on the subway? One morning I saw a man with the EXACT same hair cut and color as the poodle that he was smuggling in his purse... Murse?

Sweet hair-do, dude.

Something I've always wondered... you know that blind guy that wonders the 2 train during the work day? He walks from car to car asking for donations to "help the blind"... and my first reaction is "aww, that's sad!" and then after a second I think, "What is a blind guy doing walking by himself in between moving train platforms!? How is he on the subway platform alone at all in the first place?! That shit is hazardous."

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Every time I hear or say "Happy St. Patrick's Day!" I want to follow it with an "aaaaaaauughh!!" but then I realize that the "Aarrgh" expression isn't Irish, it's more of a pirate noise. And I don't think any pirates were Irish. Unless you punched an Irishman in the stomach, maybe he would make that noise.

Anyway, today is the one day of the year that I openly admit to myself and everyone else that my roots are actually a lovely shade of strawberry blonde and that my skin is actually pretty fair (as much as I want to fight it). Kiss me! I'm Irish.

 

No, please don't kiss me. You're creepy. You can have a high five like the other creepers outside today.

So really, what is it about this holiday that transforms everyone into a sloppy wierdo? There are thousands of people in the streets today, and probably 500 are on my roof right now pouring beer outside of my open window (thanks, assholes). Don't get me wrong, I love a good Guinness, or even a few beers in the sunshine - but seriously guys - what is going on out there?! I don't remember any of my Irish family acting like this in my childhood... except my grandfather really likes bagpipes. And corned beef.

All in all, it's a beautiful day outside. I skipped out of the bar tours today and decided to stroll out into the masses for some sunshine (another one of my poor choices) while talking to my sister on the phone and not really paying close attention to those around me. Maybe I've been in the city long enough to tune out losers and only hone in on threats and celebrities... but I think that this is a beautiful and helpful skill. However, today I was walking along and suddenly realized that everyone around me was wearing a kilt.

 

I think that this guy was standing next to me, but we were on 45th Street and not the beach (unfortunately).

"Where am I?" I thought. "Why is everyone in a kilt? And why are they all playing bagpipes? WHY DON'T I EVER PAY ATTENTION!"

I had wandered into the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade. I think it was the banner that tipped me off. Either way, I made myself a nice little cameo. Oops.

On another note, I wandered into a lovely little home goods store today and got really engrossed in looking at a few really rad frames. A boy tried to convince me to buy a Nespresso machine, but I would only settle for a delicious free sample.

 

I really do not care if George Clooney endorses this. He is a gazillionaire and I am too broke for rip-offs. Isn't he in jail anyway, Mr. Salesperson?

But I'm broke and in serious need of a caffeine buzz, so I will pretend to nicely listen to your speech while I daintily sip my free espresso.

Ciao!

You're not a New Yorker until you've cried on the Subway.

There were so many new ways to get around when I moved here. Buses! Taxis! Town cars! Guys pedaling the pedi-cabs! And of course, there is the most important public transportation of all, the veins of New York - the Subway.

Now within 2.4 days of living in New York I had already discovered that buses terrified me and that every form of a cab was out of my budget. So the subway it was. I pulled out my giant map of the NYC Metro system and was determined to memorize every train and every stop. I was determined to be a pro in another week.

Totally easy.

My roommate at the time, let's call her Green, liked to give me advice about New York. Green will be a story for another day, but I can say right now that she was not the type of person to take advice from. I would have told her that to her face, but I was always afraid she was going to stab me.

"Life is tough here," she told me one day as I had the subway map open on the table, trying to figure out how to get to the Upper East Side. "I cried on the subway all of the time when I first moved here. It's totally normal."

Maybe it was because of Green's profound words - or maybe it was because it was one of our only conversations where I wasn't planning a room escape route - but that advice really resonated with me. I was too tough. Everyone kept telling me that New York was so difficult, that the city could crush you whenever it pleased, and I refused to take this advice. Most of my friends that moved to New York before told me about their experiences crying openly on the subway. "It happens," Shelby told me one night. "One day something just breaks you and you're crying on the L train." No. I would not cry - and I would NOT cry on the subway. I was determined to be a hardened New Yorker.

A few weeks later, I was crying on the E train. I got off at Rockefeller Plaza and cried among the Christmas-at-Halloween decorations while tourists stared at me.

"What's your problem?! You're not a New Yorker unless you've cried on the Subway."