Reddit's Fantastical Voyage Pt. Two

• 7:30am - Arrive at JFK
• 9:30am - Go to my friend's house to rest and soak up some wifi
• 2:00pm - Wander through Central Park
• 3:00pm - Soup Dumplings in Chinatown
• 4:00pm - Staten Island ferry
• 5:30pm - Wander through lower Manhattan up to Washington Square Park
• 7:00pm - Falafel and beer
• 8:00pm - Get lost. Go to a horrible Fashion Week film screening
• 11:00pm - Retrieve gear from friend's house in Midtown. Break Gnarly and our bobblehead.
• 12:00pm - Head to Bushwick to sleep

Friday September 11^th

• 10:00am - Get up. Very slowly.
• 3:00pm - Set off in search of interesting food.
• 5:30pm - Grimaldi's pizza
• 7:30pm - Meet-up at Dallas BBQ
• 9:30pm - Divergent schedules - I go see Super Furry Animals and Tom goes to bars with Redditors.
• 1:00am - We meet back up at a bar in Greenwich Village and continue drinking
• 3:00am - We realize we have to be at JFK in 4 hours, are gear is in Bushwick, and we haven't slept...
• 4:00am - Camera confessionals in subway. Retrieve bags from Bushwick.
• 5:00am - Travel to JFK
• 6:00am - Pass out in the terminal
• 9:30am - Board plan headed for Chicago

We disembarked from our red-eye flight still tired and made our way to the first flop house we were crashing at in the city. No Redditors stepped up for our NYC stop, likely because the were all ashamed of the closets they call home, so we were crashing with a few of my friends in town. Our first stop was in midtown to get some rest and use the internet to communicate with all of you lovely people. We also got a home-cooked meal of delicious curry.

Rested and full of food, we headed out with no real plan to see some sights around town and get some good photos with our favorite new travel companion, the Reddit bobblehead. We wandered through Central Park for a while and then headed downtown to grab a bite to eat in Chinatown. The Staten Island Ferry was next to get some good views of the city. There was still some time to kill before going to a Fashion Week film event we had been invited to, so we meandered up from the ferry terminal to Washington Square Park and grabbed some falafel and beer on McDougal St.

Onward to the Fashion Week film party! With an open bar! I would have thought this to be an un-fuck-up-able event prior to attending, but it turns out it is possible. We were told we were going to a private film screening of some new films sponsored by Bloomingdale's for Fashion Week where the directors and actors would be in attendance to discuss their films, and I assumed most of the would be drunk because of the whole open bar scenario. What we showed up to was a regular Bloomingdale's with people shopping, some free drinks (this part was true, a saving grace), a live band drowning out the sound from the films, and the movies being show on the fifth floor on a regular TV with no one watching them. We stayed far longer than we probably should have in the hopes that the real event had not started yet, but 45 minutes after the supposed kick-off time we ditched out. There were films and drinks, but outside of that there was no similarity between our expectations and what was delivered.

The last noteworthy event of the night is a sad one: the untimely maiming of Gnarly the Narwhal and our Reddit bobblehead. It turns out that a crippled Reddit alien is actually easier to deal with for our photography purposes, so I guess that was ok, but Gnarly will never be the same. Until Tom gets home and gets his replacement tusk. After the incident we trudged out to Bushwick and passed out at my friend Luke's apartment.

On Friday we woke up and sat around absorbing the internet for a few hours before our stomaches called out for sustenance. We tried to dine at a Bosnian grill that a friend recommended, but it was closed. After a circuitous and long adventure, we ended up fulfilling a request and getting a pizza at Grimaldi's. Pretty damn tasty. Next up on the docket was going back to Manhattan for the NYC meet-up at the Dallas BBQ in Chelsea, which turned out to be quite large. At least thirty Redditors showed up for stacks of meat and "Texas-sized" beverages. After dinner we recreated some famous painting or something.

...and then I ditched out on the bar hopping afterwards because one of my favorite bands happened to be playing a show not ten blocks from the Dallas BBQ that night, Super Furry Animals. They play very infrequently in the US (they are Welsh, and this was one of three shows in the States for all of 2009) and I was being a prissy bitch to Tom about how I was so close to being able to see them finally but would probably miss out. After the first part of the meet-up Tom said I should take off if I wanted, so I invited the other Redditors milling out front (no takers) and then bolted down the block hoping I hadn't missed any of the show. It was awesome. I smile every time I think about it.

I met up with Tom and the remaining couple of Redditors at a bar in Greenwich Village at about one in the morning. We realized we had a flight out in seven hours with at least 2 hours of running around before we would get the airport. Neither one of us really were ready to call it a night yet so we decided to go with the sleep in the airport option. I see this happening frequently over the course of this trip. We ran out to Bushwick, grabbed our gear, went to the airport, and got whatever sleep we could along the way. Then it was on a plane and onwards to Chicago!