US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

Although I had set the alarm for 10am (we had to check out this morning by 11am) – I woke up around 9am and stumbled down to Starbucks for another underwhelming parfait and coffee. When you are dazed and confused and suffering from lack of sleep – what better way to kill time than to walk down 20 city blocks to Best Buys and splurge on video games…!

Anyhows – meanswhiles – Ant woke up around 10am and was slightly concerned that I wasn’t around and we had to check out by 11am. I had attempted to text Ant saying I was on my way – but his phone was turned off – so he was freakin out.

Anyhows – I got back around 10:30am and started to pack my bags (leaving it really late).

We checked out (with 15 minutes to spare) and we decided to catch the subway to our new Hotel (in Midtown but closer to the Rockefeller Centre than our current hotel). We found the hotel – but we couldn’t check in because we were way too early.

We left our bags and I took Ant to a nearby deli for him to have breakfast and try and recover from his hangover. During breakfast – we decided to do a bit of “relaxed sightseeing” and catch a train to Coney Island (which is located at the southern bit of Brooklyn). I had a bit of a burning desire to visit it – somewhat due to the grungy kitsch factor but mainly so I could mark off another “Wiz” shooting location. (I luv the Wiz. 40 year old Diana Ross playing Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow – need I say more!).

The train trip was about an hour – and we could use our subway tickets to get there. The train went from subway to above ground during Brooklyn so you got to see a bit of it. Everything feels a lot more spread out compared to Manhattan – but everything is fairly built and dense still.

When we got to Coney Island (which technically is not an Island) – it was quiet and the train station felt shiny and new.
Once you got out onto the street – there was a “Dawn of the Dead” vibe from the place. Like someone had left off an A-bomb and zombies were lurking in boarded up shops (these existed!) waiting to eat your brains.

We walked onto the main broadwalk where there were these middle aged biker guys with no shirts on having really loud conversations about “banging unconscious chicks” with frequent course language. Klass. Speaking about klass – there was a gang doing a drug deal half way down the pier. Suddenly – I’m getting these flashbacks to the Requiem for a Dream movie (which was semi-set around Coney Island). Well – the real Coney Island seems to keep with the vibe of the Requiem for a Dream heroine junkie vibe.

Everything (or just about everything) was shut. There was a shut amusement park (which was also giving me Grand Theft Auto 4 vibes) and a “Shoot the Freak” sideshow where you could shoot a real “freak” with paintball bullets – but that was shut too. We walked down to the rollercoaster (which appeared in the Wiz) which was also shut. But it was sort of interesting because they had some info about the history of the rollercoaster – which was almost going to be demolished with a plan by the nearby Aquarium to purchase the land – but the locals protested and the roller coaster has remained.

We had lunch at the LP recommended “Nathans” – which sells hot dogs and german sausages. It was about the only open thing in Coney Island but it was very busy. We had to queue up for about 15 minutes for hot dogs – which were much better than the Central Park dogs – and put your faith back into NY hot dogs. The chips were excellent as well – but calorific. Speaking about calorific – all fast food items have their calorie amounts displayed in NY. So now a visit to Krispy Kreme is not completely guilt free.

Despite almost everything being closed – I really enjoyed going out to the grungy kitschy apocalyptic site that is Coney Island – and would recommend it to others just for the thrill of it. It would be interested to see what it would be like in the height of summer – school kids going on not-quite-safe rides mixing it up with junkies and middle aged biker rapists.

We headed on a “N” train back in the direction of Manhattan – but we stopped off at “Downtown” Brooklyn to visit the MTA (Mass Transport Authority) Museum. Downtown Brooklyn felt a bit more spacious than Manhattan – and maybe a bit more grungy – but still interesting. The MTA museum was in a very interesting location – a decommissioned subway station. You walk down a set of stairs to the ticket booth (like an old fashioned entrance to a subway station) and make your way around exhibits about everything you could think of about MTA (buses, trains, subway, tickets, money trains (minus Wesley Snipes), etc). Even more interesting was that you walk down another set of steps out onto a platform which contained a set of old subway trains – all of which you could walk around. I’m sure train spotters would love it – but I enjoyed all of the old advertisements in the train. There was one about Women not having the right to vote, but they do have the right to buy laundry detergent! Women’s lib ahoy. Because we got to the museum really late – we didn’t have much time to see everything – but it is well worth the trip over to Brooklyn for it.

We headed back to Manhattan – where we finally checked into the Best Western Hospitality House. We totally lucked out with this hotel – it was a one bedroom apartment (which equals one huge bedroom, one classy bathroom, a kitchen (full kitchen not kitchenette) and a big lounge room – all in Midtown Manhattan). Our only complaint was that it wasn’t in the Upper East Side. This hotel totally s###ed all over the Thirty Thirty Hotel – and the strangest thing was that it was about the same price… Happy happy joy joy…

We chilled out for about an hour or two at the hotel before heading out to Fifth Ave in an attempt to shop (cause NY has zero sales tax on clothing). We attempted to walk into the Diesel Shop when the door woman was giving me the “slit throat” gesture… probably meaning that the shop was closed but you’d expect that level of service at Walmart not a Diesel shop. We had the same thing happen to us at an Adidas store where the guy shouted at us that the shop was closing.

We caught a subway near the Home Alone 2 hotel in a downtown direction to SoHo (South of Hudson). SoHo is a fairly ritzy shopping area – not ritzy like uptown Fifth Avenue (where we were with the female guard slit throat action) but sort of uber edgy cool. That said – just about everything was shut. We stumbled onto a pizza place for dinner which kept up with the tradition of bad service for the evening.

Given the crazy night we had last night – we called it a night and headed back to our hotel to sleep.