Empire State of Mind

Snowed In

New York City Part 1

So as I am leaving New York City heading to Washington DC i can finally fill you in on our adventures in the big apple. I’m sitting in the back of our “MegaaBus” which so far has been much better than greyhound. I’m sitting in the back row, with Rach and David snuggled up to my right, and Emily asleep leaning on the window. Best part is i have a spare seat next to me (only one on the bus) and unlimited legroom! (see photo). We had a little hiccup this morning with the girls deciding that they needed to sleep in until 7:30. Myself and David were waiting in the lobby of dumpster house, right on time at 7:30. David gave the girls a call to see if they were on they way down and needed a hand with their well packed bags. (stuffed full of rubbish). When they didn’t answer their phone i decided to pay them a visit in 408 and just check that everything was ok. I knocked on the door, and before it even opened i herd the unmistakeable sound of a very very tired and flustered Rach. After hearing this for a moment or two, when they finally did open the door i wasn’t surprised to see them both running around like crazy in their pj’s stressed out of their minds. It would appear that the volume on Emily’s alarm was too low and it failed to wake them up. I had the same problem a few days ago, but luckily it wasn’t on a day we had travel plans to stick too. At this point, i think i may just write a short letter to apple, as im sure someone from the cult   company must be reading by now.

Dear Apple,

If you have any spare moment, in which you become complacent about your plans for world domination, could you please add a few features to the iphone 5? Recently your phone has almost been responsible for myself and a few of my friends missing a bus trip from New York to Washington DC. As you can imagine this caused a fair amount of stress, rushing, and other problems. The girls had to leave the apartment without showering, makeup or doing their hair properly, as you can appreciate this wasn’t something that anyone enjoyed. The real problem however was that i was not able to have breakfast this morning because we were running so late. I hope you understand that the problems in your product have not only caused stress, pain, arguments, and almost the loss of a non refundable $30 trip to Washington but have also given me hunger pains. These hunger pains will soon lead to headaches for the other members of my group as i start to complain, whine, whinge and pester those around me. If you could add a failsafe for the alarm which informs the user of the volume of the alarm when setting it i feel that many problems (as above) could have been avoided.

Yours Truly,

Michael Powell.

Im bopping along to the sweet sounds of Ke$ha at the moment about one hour out from Washington DC so I feel there is no better time to tell you about Dexter House, our accommodation in New York City. As i turn around and look out the back window of this bus, i feel that we are far enough away from ‘dexter house’ for me to begin to relive and share the horrors which occurred there. From now on, i will refer to Dexter house as ‘Dumpster House’, ‘the dump’, ‘that place’ or something similar.

Ok This story starts about two months ago, The first accommodation which we had booked for this trip was Dexter house, a hotel/hostel on the Upper west side of New York City. David had herd from someone that it was ok and we went ahead and booked it. The Price was right, about $30 a night, and the location was amazing. Also, while all other places were charging upwards of $50 dollars per person per night for New Years Eve, Dumpster house kept their rate steady at 30.

As the trip grew close, we began to look more into the hotels/hostels that we had booked. A few bad reviews surfaced about Dexter House, including the one which stuck in my mind which stated “this place ruined our trip to New York”. Now we all assumed that the people who writing this had forgotten that they were only paying thirty dollars a night for a hotel on the upper west side of new york, or had standards which were far too high. Worried, we talked ourselves into sticking with the hotel, mainly because there wasn’t much left by this stage, and none really in our price range. The prices jumped up to about 350 a night in NYC at this time of year.

We all always had Dumpster house in our minds throughout the trip, as we travelled from San Francisco, to Vegas, to Anahiem and beyond even as i wrote this very blog we all had a dark cloud in our minds about dexter house. I think we all though things would be ok however on some level. Things started to get really interesting in Toronto however. Our next stop was New York and while rach couldn’t sleep she decided to read us Reviews of Dexter House to help us sleep. Now, some of these were absolute beauties! I have collected some of the funniest ones below.

“I’d rather prison witout parole than stay here again”

“Run, Run away and don’t look back”

“its never too late to cancel your reservation!!”

“like a horror move”

“hilarious”

“hell on earth”

Now to be fair, there were the odd ok review listed aswell with titles such as “cheap and Cheerfull” “you get what you paid for” ect. But having stayed there, even more worryinly there were some reviews titled;

“brilliant”

“would stay again, great place”

Which had either been posted by the owner of the place, which i can only imagine is a fat bald man wearing a sweat covered white singlet and stained grey sweatpants, rocking back and foward on an old creaky rocking chair while watching repeats of MASH and rolling his own cigarettes. The only other peson capable of writing these reviews obviously took some sort of knock to the head (which most proably occurred during their stay at Dumpster house).

Ok if you have read this up until now, you are probably wanting to hear from me how the place was. Well im happy to say i can now fast forward to December 27, 2010, when after about 20 hours of bussing, waiting and subwaying (the transit system not the restaurant) we arrived at the front door of the infamous Dexter House. From the outside the building looked very nice, with a nice red thingo coming out from the door with nice Christmas lights dangling down. The lobby itself looked ok too, kind of just like an older hotel which could use a little TLC. We all looked at eachother (without david of couse) and said this isn’t so bad at all. To tell you the truth i think rach was a bit upset, see she seems to get a kick out of things being really bad, weather that be a delay to a bus service, or staying in a dodgy hostel. We checked in, the guy at the desk seemed nice enough, but a bit disinterested, i guess it was pretty late. We were split into two different rooms, the girls in 408 and myself on level 2 in room 201. We split up and went to explore our new home. I carried my suitcase up the staircase which smelt kind of like the house you went to as a child to visit your parents aunty/uncle or other older distant relative. As i arrived on the second floor the smell became much more musty, then turned to curry as i approached my room. At this stage i was still in an ok mood, the corridors reminded me of Seinfeld so i was beginning my little Seinfeld fantasy camp. I opend a door from the stairwell to the lift area, then another to part A of the building. The knob almost fell out in my hand it was that loose. In front of me i see some horrible blue carpet (the rest was a mixture of wood and tiles) and the dodgy looking door to room 201. The door, and the whole place for that matter looked to have been painted about 7 or 8 hundred times. One of those if its dirty paint it sort of places i’d say. It would appear that after every murder rather than clean up the blood they would just use a nice dark brown/blue or grey on the walls to erase that part of the buildings life for later ‘guests’. 

Anyway, i start to hear strange noises all around me up the stairs and down the hallways, mixed with the strage smells, bug traps and creepy looking corridors i was now pretty freaked out. I have to jam my key into the old lock to open the door which now barely fits due to the layers of paint on the surround. When i open the door i am greeted by an even stronger musty smell that hit me in the face like a ton of bricks. I see a small hallway leading to the left follow the hall and am lead to a small area with a bunk bed desk and window. Then i saw a little bar fridge and small tv. Things wont be that bad i though to myself. And then it happened... things were dead quite, i was still pretty freaked out from the place (it truly had a weird vibe/energy) all of  a sudden i herd this noise in the walls it sounded like  heard of rats running past my room, no joke, it was one of the scariest things ive ever heard. I decided to go check out the bathrooms as i had been on a bus for the last 14 hours. I walk down the hall with strange creaks at every step then round the corner and jump three feet back at the sight of what i thought was some sort of bearded maniac who was surly holding a gun/knife/axe but infact turned out to be my reflection in a strangly placed mirror. I opened the door to the bathroom which had peoples shampoo/soap and other stuff lying around and it was pitch black, i look for the light switch and find a broken switch to the right of the door.... So it turns out my bathroom has no light. I figure this could be an interesting few days. That was about the last straw for me, i could deal with the rest but that was just a joke.

I went up to the girls and we all had a bit of a whinge and laugh about the place. I found other bathrooms on my level eventually with rusty tubs, broken tiles and more strange noises, but at least there was light! The real problem was that i was alone, the girls had eachother to laugh with  and ignore the rat holes and strange noises but i had no one. Just a window which was jammed open and letting in minus 4 degree air into the room. My heater was broken and i had no blankets. I slept in my thermals, space pants, an undershirt, tshirt, jersey and hoodie with the hood over my head for the night. After getting ready for bed i turned the TV on to try and distract me from where i was, the smells and the noises and to my absolute amazement Seinfeld was on. This was close to the happiest i have ever been. For that moment, i saw my friends; Jerry, Gerorge, Elaine (cant spell it) and Kramer in their New York apartments on my tv in my New York apartment everything was ok. I was just happy to be there and happy they were there with me. (now of course im not that obsessed with the show that i think they are my friends, but it really did make me feel much better). I went to sleep that night despite the cold and had an ok night. I woke up on the hour when i had lost my blankets/sheets and frost bite had begun fixed my bed then went back to sleep.

The next morning it was only one night till david arrived, and we could finally explore New York City, which was what i have been most excited about for the past 4 weeks/ previous 4 months. So after that is now out of the way i cant write anymore. Here are some pictures of our time in new york city, just a few for now.

So im sure that you are all wondering how and wDavid Finally arrived after flying from Milwaukee to Pittsburgh, and then catching a bus run by the chinese (not that there is anything wrong with that) to China town in New York City. The only problem with ‘great wall’ busses was they called all the messages in chinese and his ticket was completely written in chinese characters. Worse still, when he arrived at the bus station in Pittsburgh there was a sign on the door saying, “Tonights service has been cancel due to weather”. At least it was in English i guess. Somehow David managed to stay cool about it, call the company, get on to the only English speaking ‘customer service’ (ha ha) agent and find out that that sign had in fact not been removed from the night before.

It was Wednesday the 29^th December and we made our way from West 86^th street on the upper west side to China town (quite a hike) to pick david up from the bus stop and bring him back to our lovely accommodation. I was especially excited to see him as i would no longer have to spend the nights alone in the room with the rats running in the walls, people tapping on the window and the freezing cold wind on my face. Once David got checked in and set up in the room it began to feel much more like home, just a really dark, smelly, cold, wet in some parts, small, loud, messy home, but home none the less.

Over the next 4 days we had planned to see as much of the city as possible. I am still shocked  by the sheer size of New York City. I had expected to see the Empire state building in the skyline from anywhere in the city, but the truth is apart from being blocked by other buildings if you are more than 20 blocks away if you do get a glimpse of it it looks tiny. The moment where this shocked me the was a couple of days ago. We had spent the morning at Grand Central Station and the Chrylser building, (around 42^nd st) then hopped on a subway down town to south ferry at the bottom of Manhattan, exited the subway and on the horizon was the very same building looking as if it were part of another city’s skyline. The most amazing part however is that we had only travelled about 40 blocks, and the city itself spans about 200 blocks north to south. I think i have said enough really, its just very very big. Thanks to the subway however, it has been very easy to get around. Of couse we got on the wrong train once or twice, or missed our station once or twice its no fun getting it right every time.

I `just wote 2,500 words an didn’t even mention the blizzard which happend the day before we got to NYC. You can see in the pictures how bad it was. It really was amazing to see the city that never sleeps be ground to a hault by the 5^th worst storm of its history. Aparntly it costs 1,000,000 dollars to remove each inch of snow that falls in a storm, there were 20-25 inches of snow that fell in that storm..

Ok thats enough for now, we just arrived in Washington DC.

Thanks for reading, Enjoy the pics.

Michael. 

the park along the hudson river, just 1 min from our front door

THis bus had been stuck since the night before

This car stayed like this for 4 days... must have been a lazy owner

even the rich werent spared

Jasper Johns painting.. i did a year 11 art project on this painting

needs no introduction

Central Park

Its Snow O'clock

our 7 foot snowman

Brooklyn Bridge

you should see the next image in this series... will post it soon

I wrote this on a bus.. so please excuse the lack of editing at this stage haven't had time to fix it up yet.