New York: Day Four: The Director's Cut

What?  Oh right, this.  It turns out that working full-time even temporarily can take a piece out of you if you're used to sitting around on your lazy student ass.

Day four: BEA begins: Sort of.  Monday was mainly for book sellers and publishers and whatall, but we were like, Let's go to that shit anyways! because we are keen like that.

So we hauled our asses to the Javitz and got our badges and went to a panel on the 'eBook era' which apparently is 'now.'  It was interesting in a factoidal way, and full of charts and stats.  The next panel on PR in Marketing was not up our alley, or even located near our alley, as the advice was primarily to 'use facebook' and 'figure out what that twitter thing is about.'

In between the two panels we'd gone to information to ask where the Mulberry Library is, since Jersey Street wasn't on our portable-but-tiny map, and the information woman is all, Let me google that for you?  And the woman next to us is all, Oh, I work for the library, let me mark it down on your teeny map.  And we are like, FORTUITOUS!  Although upon further reflection, running into a librarian at a book expo isn't like finding a unicorn.

Anymoving on.  We knocked off for the afternoon to go do some sightseeing in Greenwich Village, because we'd heard tell of a Secret Garden there and we were hell-bent on finding this, like, best-kept secret of New York or something.  But things that are not on attractions lists are frequently not on attractions lists for a reason, so while the garden was secret and leafy, it was also small and you had to go through shrieking eels children to get to it.

Also we both had to pee, which brings down the tone of any excursion.  From there we went to Urban Outfitters to do a little more shopping, only unbeknownst to us, UO is esssspensive.  If I want to blow dolla bills in New York I'll do it right, and not at some shoddy, overpriced Forever XXI.

From there we went a-questing for Panchitos, which our hostel's concierge recommended and then proceeded to not be able to find on a map, and when the directions to a thing are very complicated and you have spent most of the day being lost (like that time you were trying to cross the street but couldn't because you cannot cross the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel and then you have to backtrack, like, five blocks to get to where you were going) and then you actually FIND that thing

and then that thing has burritos and enchiladas and three types of beans and two types of rice

and deep-fried ice cream

then everything else about the day is fine.

And then we went to the Mulberry Street Library for the Teen Author Carnival, and we got there late and had to stand in the back for the first panel and it was HOT SO HOT but we met a real live Book Smuggler

and got seats for the next panel on (I paraphrase) putting angst in your teen novel and having it not suck.  Which, ok, there were some hilarious and articulate authors on this panel (David Levithan, e.g.  Susane Colasanti in particular made me want to start reading her books, except I couldn't see her name tag from where I was sitting so we spent an uncomfortable few minutes zooming in on her chesticles with the camera to try to suss it out and then giving up) but the moderator refused to ask any questions about, you know, angst.  And putting it in novels.  And making it not suck.  So it was interesting inasmuch as listening to authors talk about their work is always interesting, but I was VERY INTRUIGED by angst and the not sucking thereof.

Regardless, it was our first bookerish day and was therefore very thrilling, although if it had come after any of our other bookerish days it would have been a let-down in the utmost.