cambell's condensed journey (just add water)

To summarize my recent trip, I bring you my List of Things I Learned in NYC. Why list form? Because I am lazy and this format applauds stark dichotomy between items, rather than well-thought, smooth segues and transitions.

• Taking the cross-town G train with three train switches from LaGuardia to Brooklyn is definitely not faster than just taking the F from Jackson Heights through Manhattan. But I liked the adventure.
• you can survive on one proper meal a day if you carry around enough snacks and eat ice cream in place of other meals.
• Bonnie's on 5th avenue in Brooklyn has one of the best burgers I've ever eaten. spicy and juicy and delicious. It was so good I ate it without ketchup or mustard.
• Red bull does give you wings. And the jitters. It's a suitable stand-in for alcohol when you're at a party but not drinking alcohol.
• SoCo punch is all about the ice ring (props to K-ron).
• in spite of gallons of SoCo punch, when a party fizzles out too early (because everyone is Old), take the people who showed up AFTER midnight (because they are obviously the fun people) and go out dancing.
• It is easier to meet people in NYC than in Dearborn. This should not be a shock to anyone, but now I have proof.
• handball is cooler than you.
  
• Sometimes you need to travel to the largest city in North America to find spiritual renewal and relaxation. And yet I still ended up sleep-deprived and exhausted.
• The Museum of Modern Art has one of the most beautiful paintings I've ever seen by an artist I had formerly not heard of: Egon Schiele. The painting is a portrait of his sister(?), Gerti Schiele, and is stark and beautiful with the most intense lines I've ever seen. Turns out there's another museum in Manhattan, the Neue Gallerie, that shows German and Austrian art from the late 19th and 20th centuries, including works by Schiele and Klimt (thanks to Bradley for that find).
• Minor league games are SO much more of a spectacle than major league games. People raced in foam hot dog costumes and bowled with cabbages. Brilliant. and all for $5. You just can't get entertainment like that for cheap anymore.
• unless it's a free concert in central park (featuring Citizen Cope and the Blind Boys of Alabama). wait, that wasn't a proper list item. now I'm forcing a narrative into list format. ack.
  
• It won't rain if you carry around an umbrella. if you don't have an umbrella, it will hit you like it hit those foreign tourists I saw putting armholes in black plastic garbage bags.
• your best friends are the ones you can buy music for, then they freely admit they don't like it and give you the album back, which is good because you don't actually own said album. no hurt feelings, no love lost.
• it's much easier to find killer-good lemon pie with thick fluffy meringue in NYC.
• I don't care for politics in church, even if they're anti-war and pro-civil rights and I ostensibly agree with them. It just feels dirty. That said, it was nice to go to an open and accepting church on Sunday and see the cute, fifty-ish lesbian couple sitting in front of me.
• Just because someone says they're going to meet you somewhere and then don't show up, doesn't mean they got hit by a wayward taxi and are lying bloodied and mangled in the street. Thanks to my mother for passing on those paranoid visions of Worst Case Scenarios. Thanks also to friends for quelling those fears and bringing me back to reality.
• Cell phones make traveling easier. I should get one.
• I still want to move to Brooklyn.