A Tale of Two Cities

Well, YR is temporarily back in his homeland for a few weeks, combining vacation and business. I'm giving a big presentation on Tuesday at a conference in Chicago. Wish me luck, fools.

In any case, experienced the best of NY, and the worst of NY, in the span of the 12 hours I've been here. So it was already a very long travel day, complete with delayed take-off from Munich (due to stupidity of people, which I will come back to), and a very delayed landing at JFK at about 7pm EST, which was further exacerbated by the bad storms here. Anyway, it was a mess. On a nice day, JFK is the shittiest airport in the world. Finally get bags, customs clearances, etc. only to realize I need cash. "excuse me, where is the ATM?", queries YR to a knowledgeable-looking fellow. "the what?", he responded rudely. Thinking I had been mistakenly speaking french, I paused and then said "The ATM. The Cash machine". To which he responded even more rudely "What?". To this, I was forced to reply in full New York-ese, "Dude, the machine that gives you fucking money". Argh....Fine. Then Round 2 of annoyingness. The JFK cab. For those of you who AREN'T familiar, JFK cabbies suck balls. They are usually the ones who only go between Times Square and JFK and don't know any other address. PLUS, they get bitchy when you say Brooklyn. My cabbie was instantly on my shit list when he said "manhattan?", and I replied Brooklyn. he says "manhattan?" again, and i repeat, in my best english, "BROOKLYN". He then repeats "Brooklyn?" in this obnoxious way and finally, for now the second time in 10 minutes, I snap and say "Yeah, man, you know, the fucking borough of Brooklyn? It's huge, has 2.2 million people? You have to go through it to get to most points in Manhattan?" Jesus.

So then I get the "I don't know where that is". I was like, 'i do, drive on'. Which he did, beligerantly. I almost puked from car sickness...Then we get near downtown Brooklyn, and he's like 'I don't know where to go', and i say, 'after flatbush, make a left on hoyt', and he starts FREAKING out. He's like 'i can't make a left on flatbush. flatbush here.' oh my god. i could go on, but what a disaster. Fucking retarded.

Good new york? Got in, hustled over to my favorite middle-eastern place, got some reasonably-priced delicious take-out, and chilled. Wandered around the neighborhood this morning. There are few places I'd rather be than Brooklyn on a nice, sunny, early morning. Hence, the two cities!

Laters.

PS. Airlines should fine people when they check bags and then don't get on the plane. And it wasn't a missed connection. If the bags make it, you had time to. So we get delayed an HOUR because mr and mrs. retardo can't fucking find a gate, and their bags have to be taken off. Those people should be forced to stand in the passport line for non-us citizens at JFK for 12 days.

PPS: Lufthansa rocks. Consistantly the best airline I've flown. The staff is great, the airports are great (munich, especially), and they are just very solid.

PPPS: Staying at punk-rock phil's in brooklyn while he and katie are in barcelona. Saw them there last weekend. More on that in later posts. Needless to say, great time, great city, and i love the fact that within a week's time, get to see the same people on two continents.