Eat New York!

You guys!  I have been packing!  It has been hellish.  We won't talk about it.

Instead, I will do a food round-up of our New York trip, which I just now realized I never did and should do otherwise it won't get done and then I will go on a cruise and come back with more food pr0n and forget about this.  Everyone knows trips are for eating!  So!  New York, how we ate you.

(I will be doing this without the aid of my beloved Document, which is now packed.  Woe for my memory.)

My sister and I are not mens, and as such we prefer near-constant snacking to several hearty meals.  So for the most part we got A Thing and then split that Thing and then a few hours later got another Thing.  That way you get to sample more Things.  But our first night in NY we were so starved that we each got our own Thing from the pizza place across the way.  The pizza slices were 'uge.

Mine had spinach and tomato and a soft cheese which was probably unpasteurized and therefore off-limits for my pregnant self, but mad tasty (and I didn't get listeria, so).  Bekah's had broccoli and diced chicken fingers, which SOUNDED TERRIBLE but was excellent (I hear.  Chicken was on my no-fly list, and I can still only eat it if I don't have to look at it or think about it.  Why you so gross, chicken?).

Our first morning we were all, What does one eat?  Because we hadn't yet fallen into the habit of ducking into ANY DELI ANYWHERE and getting scrambled eggs and home fries, or french toast and home fries, or french toast and scrambled eggs and HEAPS OF BACON for, like, $3.25.

So that first jet-lagged morning we ate at Dunkin Donuts and were like, Well now that's done.  We made up for it by going to Coney Island later that day and getting hot dogs

and funnel cakes.

We ate loads of tasty street-cart meats (and at least one more hot dog outside the BEA, which was nast and kind of put me off my feed) and no small amount of bagels (which really are better in NY and have forever ruined me for west coast bagels), all of which were delicious and none of which got photographed, because we were busy eating them.

But certain foods were iconically New York and obviously we had to get a soft pretzel in Central Park (it helps that wandering lost through the Met for hours works up an appetite)

and a cheesecake(s) from the bakery around the corner from our hostel.

That bakery was a dangerous sauce, because every night we'd be staggering home, exhausted and maybe a little hungry, and we'd duck into the bakery just to see and we'd walk out with fritters the size of my face.

I already talked about our Mexican extravaganza at Panchitos, so I'll just repost this photo and move on.

What I haven't talked about was Brother Jimmy's BBQ, half a block from our hostel.

We'd walk by there every night on the way home, hungry enough for the bakery but not quite hungry enough for some South in our mouths, but then the day that we got lost in Little Italy (again) we had PLANNED to have dinner there, like a bunch of fore-thinking grown-ups.  Getting lost = extra starved = hush puppies to start

and pulled pork to finish

and nothing left on the plates, and every one of the sauces sampled LIBERALLY

and everything was amazing and everyone was happy.  We need THAT to be HERE in my FACE.  (I would like to point out that there were four pickles and that Bekah ate three of them when I wasn't looking when HALF OF FOUR IS CLEARLY TWO and they were very excellent pickles and I'm still resentful.)

After Brother Jimmy's, what are you going to do, right?  Nothing.  I can't remember a single thing that we ate after that, except that I had a very disappointing bagel at the airport in Toronto, and that we had quite a good knish at some point after trying to figure out what they were for ages (a deep-fried mashed potato patty.  How is that not going to be good?) and that, aside from the Sarah Dessen whoopie pie (azmazing) and the Shel Silverstein black-and-white cookie (disappointing), we also ate some ridiculous tiny cupcakes at a booth that asked if we were a small business, and that nearly half the booths had candy out in the first few days and we lived kind of mostly off that for a while, and that none of our airlines fed us and so we bought some overwrought pastries from the pastry cart outside our hostel (that we weirdly missed seeing until the LAST DAY) and they got crushed in the carry-on but were perfect anyways, and that even though I was very newly pregnant I wasn't sick or tired, thank the goodness.

New York, you fed us well.

New York: Day Six - I'm still doing these, right?

Right.  So.

There being two of us, I browsed the feeding frenzy for good-looking titles while boo got in line for Jimmy Fallon, who is exactly as giggly in real life as he is on tv.

He doesn't seem to have his slick, public persona in place yet, because after handing boo her book he was all, Please!  Thank you!  And she was like, What?

Then we got in line for the Mo Willems signing to get copies of Should I Share My Ice Cream, and we met Pig and Elephant, who are apparently a thing.

Then, there still being two of us, I went to the Maureen Johnson signing to get The Last Little Blue Envelope (the sequel to Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes, which came out FIVE YEARS AGO but which I only just read, like, two months ago THANK GOODNESS) while Bekah went to see Chris van Allsberg, and this was the first and only time we were both stuck in crappy lines with no one to chat with, and we didn't even have each other to make it better.

That morning we'd walked by the MacMillan booth and the woman is all, Here is a schedule for the Big Red Bag giveaways!  In previous years you had to be a book-seller to get a bag but this year ANYONE can get one, you just have to be here at the right time!  So we were all, I wonder what is in these Big Red Bags!  What kind of treats?  So we came back at, like, 2 or whatever to find that the Big Red Bag giveaway was a giveaway of big, red bags.  I mean, sturdy-ass bags, and Bekah used hers (re-named the Big Red Bitch) as a carry-on to haul more books home.  But just bags.

And then we were accosted by the Scientologist pirates from the L Ron Hubbard booth

which we had been trying to avoid but it was right by blackbirds so we kept accidentally wandering through it and then trying to skedaddle.

We went to a panel called Book Reviews Online (or some such), expecting it to be interesting and pertinent, but it was really just large print media like the NYRB explaining how awesome it is to be able to review online (you can fit more words!  For the same price!) and it was a little bit What are bloggers?  Oh yes we have one of those on staff.  So we left early, but I heard it never got any better.

We were heading back to that dodgy library on Jersey St where we'd gotten mad lost on Monday trying to get to the Teen Author Carnival, this time for a Writing for YA panel.  I'd seen Maureen Johnson earlier that morning (as I mentioned) and then later I saw her wander across the exhibition floor and was all, Oh, there's Maureen Johnson!  And she turned and I was like, *awkward wave* and when we got to the YA panel and took our seats (in the front row like keeners) and checked the panel, there she was again.  Sorry for accidentally stalking you, Maureen.

Last time we'd gotten lost leaving the library because we were so caught up in the panel we'd just seen, so this time we paid SUCH ATTENTION TO WHERE WE WERE GOING but Bekah failed to go through the turnstile quickly enough which invalidates your card for that station and all stations in the area, so we had to walk to the next station weeping over our empty stomachs, since we were STARVING OURSELVES for Brother Jimmy's

more about which another time, and after which we rolled home.

New York: Day Five

In direct inverse proportion to how much Day Four kind of stank, Day Five was full of surprises and awesome.  And I sort of already blogged about this already but I'm gonna again.

So.  We got to the Javitz at 7 to get tickets for the Temple Grandin signing, because Temple Grandin is intense.  And then we sat in the line-up to get in and waited for two hours (as one does) and flipped through the Things Going On Today magazine, whence all our surprises.  Shel Silverstein preview!  Jimmy Fallon tomorrow!  And so on.

Ok and then the floodgates opened and we got our first taste of the feeding frenzy that is the HarperCollins and Hachette (pronounced 'Ha-shet' and not, as I have been saying, 'Hatchet') and Penguin booths.  Stacks of books for the taking!  Elbowing also for the taking!  No time to read blurbs or book-backs!  TAKE!  TAKE!  TAKE!  It was actually delightful and overwhelming and fun in the way that very loud dance music is.  OVERSTIMULATION!

And then we went and met my internet-friend 'blackbird' at her booth, which had soft carpeting and cushioned seats and which we stopped by MANY TIMES over the next few days for these reasons (and also because it had BLACKBIRD and she is hilarious and precious and New Yorky and dear, and her only flaw is not telling us she wasn't coming on Thursday so we could get a picture with her on Wednesday.  Alas).

While we were sitting on the Javitz steps with blackbird, eating our hotdogs and yakking, a pack of school-children traipsed by with identical treats, and we were like, Where did you children get those treats?  And one of the minders is all, They're giving free treats away thataway.  So we wandered over to the Sarah Dessen truck and got red velvet whoopie pies

from who I later realized was Sarah Dessen herself (whoops.  I loved The Truth About Forever, Sarah!) and they were one of the best things we ate all week (there will be a wrap-up of Things We Ate later.  Also, Our Hostel and The Sketchy Adventures Therein).  Grandma Plett loved red velvet, so I like to think we were honoring her in chosing this over strawberry.

And then, and then we got in line for Mike Holmes, a line that was full of giddy girls, and by the time we got to Mike Holmes we were both turned to eleven and very high-pitched but he was so calming and had such enormous, soft hands and then we HUGGED HIM and it was one of my top two celebrity encounters of the week.

And then I met Chuck Klosterman and then we met R L Stine, who was a bit leery but which was kind of expected, and then we spent a good twenty minutes circling a quadrant of booths looking for a particular booth, but they aren't in strictly numerical order and they aren't always labelled and finally we just asked a girl, Where is the Shel Silverstein?  And she was all, Right here, and the cookies are on their way.

Oh and somewhere in there we saw a skinny older lady doing something technological on a stage and then we were like Is that Margaret Atwood?!?!  And then we stopped and had a moment because MARGARET ATWOOD.  She was signing e-books, which was a very future-space-tech and Atwoody thing to be doing.

And then we hauled our wheelie bag of books back to the hostel and changed our shoes and headed out to the library (the big one, with the lions, which is easier to find on a map) for a sci-fi/fantasy reading.

And, ok.  When I'd gone online to rsvp, the sign-up had been closed, but I figured we'd show up and hope they could squeeze us in and if not, we'd have gotten to see the library anyways.

So we get there and start a living wait list, and more people keep showing up who didn't sign up, and they fall in with the wait list, and the gals start checking people who DID sign up off a list that is tragically not in alphabetical order so they have to go through all the pages looking for each person, but everyone is orderly and patient because we are book people and not rowdy, except there's ONE GUY behind us in the wait list who is all, I'm not on the list but I'm reviewing one of these authors so it's very important that I cover this.  And we are like, Dude, everyone here is probably reviewing one of these authors.  Fall in.

So he falls in but ok, did I mention that he's blind and does it make this story worse if he is?  Because he is the WHINIEST PERSON ALIVE and also blind so he keeps being like, How many more people are left?  And me and boo are like, Maybe 30?  But it's taking a while to get through everyone (see: list issue) and he's all *aggrieved sigh* This isn't right!  It never said you had to have a reservation!  And we're like, The website did.  And he's all Well NOT EVERYONE HAS COMPUTERS!  And we're like *careful silence, because in addition to being blind he is also maybe crazy?*  And then five minutes go by and he's like, Miss?  How many more people?  And we're like, Maybe 25?  And it goes around again.

But.  We all got in in the end, and the reading was amazing.  Oh hell, this is already a very long post.  Suffice it to say that Lev Grossman reads like an elementary school teacher (in a good way), John Scalzi is hilarious even if I think his fiction is kind of bad, Scott Westerfeld had illustrations, and Cat Valente is a force and I want to be her bestie.

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.

Day Three: Addendum

Before we entered the Met-maze we sat on the steps and let Acapella Soul serenade us.

Where were we? Oh yes. New York: Day Three

The second day of aggressive sight-seeing is always more exhausting than the first day, because your capacity for absorption (and walking) is waning and you haven't yet built up the stamina of later days.  So.  This day was the most exhausting.

But also exciting!  Because we went to Central Park and rode the carousel (which is sadly no longer a dollar.  Two-fifty is still a cheap ten-minute ride, but there's something satisfying about paying a lone dollar).

On our way into Central Park we were besieged by those guys who try to sell you carriage rides, and one guy told Bekah that her purse made her look very sexy (so...without the purse she is an unsexy hag?).

We unexpectedly came upon a statue of Hans Christian Anderson reading The Ugly Duckling to a duckling

and to us

and then found the Alice in Wonderland statue.  We had to linger some twenty minutes to get a photo of it without any kids clambering on it, and then we had to be quick because a new flock of kids would usually climb up as the last flock was climbing down.  There was no lag time.

and then we climbed on it

We went to the Met and this is where exhaustion kicked in, because it is SO LARGE.  And maze-like.  And there is many an art.  This one installation of tiny people on a wall caught our eye, and we both spent a bizarre few minutes trying to get a 'good' photo of it without being sure what a 'good' photo would be, which is why we now have a dozen photos between us of this one thing and we're still not sure what we were trying to capture.

what?

Then we walked down 5th Ave and Madison Ave and Parks Ave to see the old robber baron mansions that have been converted into apartments and Japanese consulates.

Thence to Grand Central Station, which was yuuuge

but had disappointing and expensive gelato.  Green apple should not taste like pear.  It should be tart.

Then we wandered back to our hostel, picking up a falafel on the way (Vancouver, whither thy street food carts?) and a couple of cheesecakes to smuggle into our room.

New York: Day Two: The More Longerer Version

Ok.  We tried to find MOOD again in the daylight but were still thrown off by the scaffolding and also being wrong about where it was.  But we did find the Macy's and the wooden escalator, AND we found the H+M (it was right next to the Macy's.  For the record, Macy's is a terrible marker because it is a block long and wraps around both sides, so later when you go back to find that breakfast place [this was before we realized that every deli does some sort of breakfast] you won't remember which bit of Macy's you meant 'across from') AND we thought we'd found the flea market, but it was more fleas than market and later we discovered it was not the flea market we'd been looking for.

And then we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and it was hot and lovely and took only half the time the internet said it would.

And then we got lost in Brooklyn and got lost again and found a train and tried to make a connection and got lost again and then found the train to Coney Island and that was almost better than finding Coney Island itself.  Except that the train didn't have freaks, and Coney Island did.

also hot dogs

The freak show was super, with a fire-eater and a sword-eater and a hypnotist and a KNIFE-THROWER WHO SET A GUINNESS RECORD WHILE WE WATCHED (the Guinness guy was there and everything) by throwing 78 knives in a Ladder of Death around TWO girls in less than a minute.  I know.  The knife-thrower was the most impressive but also the most watched-through-fingers-due-to-terror-and-liveness-of-show-and-potential-for-actual-death.

And then as we were darting out to the beach to dip our feet in the Atlantic (or whatever) we heard a caller for a $2 freak show and amigos?  You get what you pay for.  The woman was turrrrrible.  A boring performer, a stumbling banterer, a 'Hey guys, do you want me to stomp on this box full of glass?  Cause I'll do it.  I'll...hey guys!  Guys!  I'll do it, don't think I wont!'  We finally gave up all hope on it getting better (i.e. her leaving the stage) and consoled ourselves with Bekah's first funnel cake.

 nothing a little deep-fried sugar can't cure

And then we went home and bought some apples at the market and the market-guy told us we were going to kill all the mens, and we were like, What?  No!  And he was like, Because you have all much beauty!  And we were like, Ahhhh, yes.  Well.  And then we felt uncomfortable and went home to bed.

New York: Day One: The Extended Version

New York!  We went.  It was bananas.  I don't even know how to blog this, so I'm just going to go until I reach a breaking point and then stop.  Dealsies?

pre-travel early am faces

Ok so we flew in on a Friday, and caught the bus and then the train and this was before we knew there might be elevators and before we knew you could go through the service doors if you had bags so we lugged our suitcases up and down many a flight of stairs and Bekah got stuck on the top of a turnstile because she was trying to lift her bag over it while she went through it.  The LOLS!

post-travel faces

On our way from the train to the hostel we went the wrong way twice, were asked for directions twice, were asked if we were Jewish once, and if a guy's hat looked good with his outfit.  It was a very busy seven blocks.

Times Square is very dull and billboardy during the day and since it was only 7 or so we had pizza (and were all stoked because this pizza place was across the street from our hostel.  This is before we realized you can't swing a dead cat in New York without hitting a pizza place) and wandered up to be dazzled by the lights at night.

the lights, but you've already seen this photo

Everyone wants to sell you comedy tickets in Times Square, which is why we actively avoided it after dark.  They are insistant.

And also that night we went to Madison Square Gardens (like, the outside bit) and wandered down 37th looking for MOOD and couldn't find it because of the dark and the scaffolding and also we were misinformed vis a vis it's location.  And then we went back to our dodgy hostel with its rickety beds, about more which another time.

I'mma end this post here for tidiness' sake.