by Scott Pape |May 19th 2009
Lunch on the road in LA (a month's worth of calories)
Everyone makes such a big deal about New York. Songs are sung about it, television series are based around it, travel writers and even the comb-over king live there — but is it all it’s cracked up to be?
Absolutely.
Of all the cities I’ve visited throughout the world, the Big Apple is my favourite. There’s a buzz that’s hard to explain — and it’s infectious.
There’s so much happening in New York you feel like anything could happen. And often it does.
My final evening in New York was spent at an Italian restaurant in Soho. A friend had suggested the place, but forgot to mention that you had to have a reservation or be a celebrity to get a table. So I found myself eating at the bar — itself packed. Two girls sat to my left — who could have been extras for S.. and the City.
Chatting to them for five minutes confirmed they were carbon copies of Carrie and the girls: Expensive clothes. Great Restaurants. Hot Bars.
They were living the life that left their friends back in the sleepy state of Utah green with envy.
As this was my last evening in the city, the girls demanded that they take me out for a goodbye drink, which was a quintessentially New York affair: the ‘bar’ was an unlit, unmarked doorway on a shady street corner that most people were walking straight past.
As the girls pointed their Jimmy Choos to the door, a fashionably scruffy dude opened the door and led us down to a basement with the most outrageously expensive cocktails I’ve ever had.
Soon I would be on the other side of the world, and a million miles from the bright lights of the most exciting city in the world.
Yet it’s not that out of reach for most people.
The girls told me that New York hasn’t escaped the recession. Sure, real estate prices here are high — a consequence of seven million people wanting to live in the one place — but rents are coming down. One of the girls lives in the upper east side (‘where Samantha lived’), renting a one-bedder that costs her $2,000 a month. Expensive, but hardly outrageous. Central London is arguably dearer.
But it’s not the bars that make New York special (although they’re fun). It’s not the shopping (although it’s plentiful and cheap). It’s the feeling you get that you’re in a city that never sleeps, where people all around you are striving to fulfil their dreams … at breakneck speed. It’s something everyone should experience at least once — and with a decent dollar, cheap airfares, and cheaper hotels, a quick fact-finding mission could provide you with the inspiration to shake off the negativity of the Global Financial Crisis and get moving again!
Tread your own path!
In the desert somewhere. Taken by a fellow tourist who couldn't get the car in the picture.
And again.
Would you like fries with your 1000% Payday loan ?
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