This article is classified "Real"
Almanacs list New York as the fifth largest city on Earth. Of course, that
is only if you count Tokyo and Yokohama as one city, which isn't really fair
even if they are right across the river from each other. So any reasonable
person would say New York was the fourth largest city on Earth.
One can separate New York into five Boroughs: Manhattan, Queens, Bronx,
Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Each of these has its own levels of interest,
danger, and people who try to wash your car windows even if you don't want
them to because you'd just washed the car anyway.
Manhattan
---------
This island is the most famous part of New York. Current theories suggest
that Manhattan is a scientific experiment to determine how long it takes for
people to turn a seven mile long island into a solid cube of buildings. If
it were not for Central Park, this most certainly would have already
happened.
Since this is the part of New York that everybody thinks about when you say
New York, it may be where you want to stay for your trip. It is, in some
areas, one of the safest places to be in New York. This means it is about
as safe as sticking a lighted blowtorch in your mouth after having chugged a
few liters of 87 octane gasoline.
Queens
------
This area is one of the less developed areas of New York, being only as
densely populated as Des Moines, Iowa, provided the entire population of Des
Moines lived on the same block. Queens sits entirely on Long Island, which,
as you may have guessed, is rather long.
There is absolutely nothing worth seeing in Queens, so don't go there unless
you don't like to lie to your friends and want to tell them you spent your
vacation in Jamaica. You can honestly say you went to Jamaica, which is on
an island and where they talk with an unusual accent, walk about in exotic
outfits, have strange hairdos, and listen to music even the most serious rug
user would not be able to write, much less enjoy.
Bronx
-----
The Bronx is probably the least safe place to be in New York. It is well
known by the inhabitants that if your car is struck by another car in the
Bronx, you should never get out of the car, or even acknowledge what
happened. This holds even if the impact was great enough to cave in the
side of your car, rupture all tires (including the spare), and sever two of
your major arteries.
A hitchhiker killed in the Bronx will be referred to, by police, as a
suicide victim. This is one of the more sure ways of committing suicide,
only surpassed in sureness by stripping down to your underwear and climbing
inside the reactor at Three Mile Island. And even that is not as quick.
Brooklyn
--------
Brooklyn is most famous for its many bridge salesmen. This should be a
definite stop on any sightseeing tour. To fit in better with the local
population, you may wish to speak like them. One of the simplest ways to
speak with a Brooklyn accent is to put a bag of marbles in your mouth and
gargle Drain-O for ten minutes.
If you go to Brooklyn, purchase a map first. Manhattan is easy to navigate
since most of the streets are in a grid. Queens is a little more confusing
because it uses street names instead of numbers. Brooklyn, on the other
hand, is yet another example of how severe drug use can effect the city
planning council.
If you should enter Brooklyn without a map, don't bother asking the people
you see on the street. Chances are they are just as lost.
Staten Island
-------------
This island has expended considerable energy in an attempt to sever
themselves from New York, and who can blame them. The only reason they have
been unable to do so is that the public realizes the only other option is to
be a part of New Jersey.
To get to Staten Island one must either take the Verrazano Narrows Bridge or
the Staten Island ferry. As the bridge tolls require a small bank loan and
your first-born child, the ferry may be a better choice for the
cost-conscious hitchhiker. This ferry can provide hours of entertainment,
provided you prefer slasher movies.
Where to stay:
--------------
Considering the overall costs, you have several options:
1) Find a warm grating. This is a rather popular choice.
It became so popular in the past few years that the New
York City planning commission has installed many new
grates. While these grates provide an absolute boon for
you and ten thousand of your fellow bunkmates, they also
provide a rather serious hazard to any female hitchhikers
who like to wear high-heels. You may be worried that the
people near you on the grate are criminals. This is not
true. Careful research by the city has shown that most of
them were just thrown out of mental asylums.
2) Sleep in your van or car. This option is quite expensive,
as parking in New York costs as much as a small villa in the
rustic portion of many European countries. This is also
somewhat more dangerous than strapping yourself to meat and
falling into a pit-bull kennel. In most cities you would
not expect your hubcaps to remain after a night on the street,
but in New York, be surprised if the frame is still there in
the morning.
3) Rent an inexpensive hotel. The hotels in this category
can easily be located: just look for any building with the
sign "low hourly rates" outside. Many people refuse to try
these places because they feel they are cockroach-infested
piles of safety and health violations. Nothing could be
further from the truth. No self-respecting cockroach would
be caught dead in a place like that, and safety and health
inspectors never check them, so how could they possibly be
in violation?
4) Go to the Ritz. Considering the extreme costs involved, I
recommend the following methods of getting a room. Hang out
in the hallway until some guests leave their room, then sneak
in and get some sleep before they come back from a night of
partying. Borrow some mountain climbing gear, scale the
outside of the building, and locate an unoccupied room to spend
the night in. Pay the manager with monopoly money, and hope he
does not notice until morning. In any of the above cases, if
they catch you, act surprised, and try your best to sound as
if you are an immigrant from an underdeveloped third-world
country who doesn't know any better. Or better yet, pretend
you are from the Bronx.
Where to eat:
-------------
The answer to this is quite simple. Do not eat food sold from carts on the
street unless you enjoy eating deceased house pets. Do not eat at any
restaurant with a front of more the five meters unless your last name is
Kennedy or Vanderbilt. Do not eat in any bar, unless it is prepackaged
preprocessed food with preparation instructions containing no word over two
syllables.
If you are going to eat, eat pizza. No, don't have pizza one night and then
wonder what you will eat the rest of the time, eat only pizza. The pizza in
New York is some of the best pizza in the world, and is one of the only safe
foods in New York unless you are a native and have built up an immunity.
The recommendation is to have pizza morning, noon, and night.
The best pizza in New York is between 70th and 80th street on the east side
of Manhattan. This pizza is so good that many people have been known to
fall into a coma caused by continual stimulation of the pleasure center of
the brain. In the Bronx, people are killed for drug money, but on the upper
east side people are killed for pizza money.
If you must eat something else, go to a deli. They will charge about five
times the cost of the same food in a supermarket, but the food can be quite
good. The best delis are ones that are halfway below ground. If it takes
more than five steps to get down to it, back up. If the deli is flush with
the sidewalk, have your credit card ready.
There are two kinds of delis in New York: Italian and Jewish. If you go to
a Jewish deli, do not miss tasting the New York bagels. These are true
bagels, well worth any cost (between fifty cents and a dollar each usually).
The bagels are so popular, you can even get them in some Chinese
restaurants. In Italian delis the meatball hero is usually safe. Be
prepared for the enormous amount of grease you are about to consume first,
however.
What to see:
------------
The World Trade Center (AKA, the Twin Towers). I highly recommend that you
not waste the time and money going here. The money you save from the
elevator ride to the top will be enough to pay for your children's college
tuition. There is nothing to see once you are at the top as pollution and
fog hide everything in the distance, the glass windows are always smeared
with grease from the faces of thousands of gawkers, and the observation deck
on the roof is pulled so far back from the edge that it is surprising you
can see any part of the ground at all. The Empire State Building charges a
much more reasonable fee, and you can hang over the edge of the observation
deck if you want to (not recommended).
The Stock Market (AKA, Wall Street). Wall Street itself is a rather boring
sight as most of the buildings are being refaced at any given time. On the
other hand, the Stock Market can provide hours of entertainment. Watching
traders wade through knee deep piles of paper, barging through densely
packed crowds, and occasionally collapsing due to a missed appointment for a
coronary bypass can be fun and enlightening. Few people really know how
many times a person must be trodden on before they suffer internal damage
until they watch the Stock Market for a few hours.
The Federal Reserve (AKA, the Fed). While Fort Knox contains the United
States gold reserve, the Fed contains the gold of other countries. When a
country sells arms to another country, the money transfer is usually made by
moving gold from one bin in the Fed to another. There are several guided
tours that will take you to see the bins of gold bricks for yourself. As a
joke, you may want to try slipping a gold painted brick into one of the
bins. Just imagine the look on the face of the French ambassador when he
tries to explain that one.
The Statue of Liberty. If you wish to go to the top of the Statue of
Liberty, I suggest the following plan. As the ferry pulls up to the island,
leap across the gap before it pulls in, and run to the statue. Take the
stairs to the top of the pedestal (the elevators take too long) and run up
the spiral staircase to the head. You will have about three seconds of
viewing time before eight million people show up and form a line. Note that
even this will not work if it is a busy day. Be careful of the guy at the
ferry station who will squash your pennies in a printing press for money.
The Museum of Natural History. A good place to go if you like to see a
great deal of stuffed animals. If you don't, there is still the dinosaur
room.
Hayden Planetarium. This place, in itself, is not particularly exciting.
However, there is a wonderful store just two blocks north of it called the
bone shop. If you were visiting the Museum of Natural History and wished
you could fill your house with stuffed endangered species and carefully
reassembled skeletons, then this is a place to visit. For reasonable prices
you can buy insects trapped in amber, eggs of birds ranging from sparrow to
ostrich, stuffed animals (including a Dodo Bird), and skeletons. They
even sell human skulls.
The Museum of Modern Art. This museum is rather large; do not be surprised
if you end up wandering about for several days. Because of its popularity,
all signs appear in several languages. Unfortunately English is not one of
them.
The Bronx Zoo. If you hitchhike to the Bronx Zoo, make sure the car you get
in is going all the way there. Never should you ever let a driver drop you
off in the Bronx itself. If this situation arises, ride with the driver to
his or her destination, even if it is Chicago. Do not visit the zoo between
November and March unless you are a cage salesman and want to examine some
of the samples at the zoo. Do not visit between March and June unless you
want to see what it feels like to live in Hong Kong.
Where to shop:
--------------
Avoid all stores that say they are going out of business. These stores will
probably outlast your grandchildren, and then some. If, for any reason, you
feel morally obligated not to purchase stolen goods, avoid all people
selling things on the street for 75% of their cost. Please note that all
items sold in the street for 50% or less of their usual cost are probably
not stolen, but were found in a dumpster behind a store, thrown out because
they were faulty and had already claimed the lives of at least four
families. If you are a real thrill seeker, try this out.
Do not go to the back of any shop narrower than a really fat guy, otherwise
you might as well hand your wallet to the nearest thief and save yourself
the trouble. If you are shopping at a food stand, don't buy anything out
front if there is also some inside the store.
The best stores are on the west side of Manhattan, between 50th and 85th
street. For the stores in this area, the best ones are the shallowest. If
a store is less than four meters deep it is most likely a fantastic store.
If it is ten meters deep it is an okay store, and if it is thirty meters
deep avoid it like the plague. Reverse these rules elsewhere in New York.
Another good place to shop is in the lower section of Manhattan where the
streets are still numbered, but using numbers between 14 and 20. The ones
in the vicinity of Broadway tend to be especially good. Books are probably
the most popular item in the area.
Getting around:
---------------
Unless you are Rambo or Bruce Lee, it is highly recommended you avoid the
subway. If you insist on the "New York experience" and decide to take the
subway, avoid the upper half of the blue and green lines, and the entire L
line, which is buried so deep that they had to get a variance from Satan to
build it. Whatever you do, do not give a subway musician more than $1
unless you would like to spend the rest of your visit surrounded by out of
work accordion players.
Taxi cabs are often a good choice for trips that are too far to walk or pass
through bad areas (which is most of New York). Despite rumors, taxis are
not expensive, and are often very quick. The taxi driver will not bother
you with long winded conversations about the benefits of certain hemorrhoid
creams, mainly because there is little or no chance that you both happen to
speak the same language. Tip the taxi driver at least 10% or the cab may
pull away before you are completely out of it. Do not tip the taxi driver
more than 20% or he will follow you around all day.
Buses are usually a good intermediate choice. They tend to be rather safe,
and cost only as much as the subway. The main problem is twofold; if you
don't know exactly where the bus is, they will not tell you. There are no
signs, messages, or announcements telling you where you are, so memorize the
bus route map while waiting for it to arrive. The buses usually run
north-south or east-west, and unless there is an amazing coincidence, you
will inevitably need to transfer. Even if you don't think you will transfer,
take a transfer slip anyway; you can always hock it to somebody.