A TRIP TO NEW YORK

We touched down at JFK around 9:30 PM. A quick 4 and a half hours. The baggage claim cycled quick and we were outside in the cold soon after. I hadn't been somewhere that cold in 2 years. We hopped in an Uber for the 45 minute commute into the city. The hotel, the Sheraton in Times Square, stood tall in the night sky. Bruce and I headed up to floor 17 to unpack and grab our coats before shooting down the elevator, through the lobby, and out into the cold New York streets. 

When in New York, one must get a proper slice of pizza. Ray's Pizza was only a short trudge from the hotel. The slices were large and the beer was cold. Well worth it. On our very first outing in the city, I forgot my camera. The roll of Ilford HP5 Plus had to be finished by the end of the trip. Alas, it was left in my bag.

We walked/ran to the grocery store for a beer walk/run, selecting some local New York brew. 4 years ago I couldn't have fathomed a beer run in New York City. The gang was out late that night. We didn't settle in until 2 or 3 am.

Mere hours after falling asleep, we were up again. The conference had begun. Down on the 3rd floor, radio-ites milled about the rooms and halls trying to find their panel. Well, maybe I was the only one trying to find the panel I wanted to attend. Aimlessly wandering around, I happened to stumble into the one I was trying to find. It was packed. I was a part of the overflow, standing by the door and hugging the walls. As a very new photographer, a panel on concert photography was promising. It was promising to about 60 others too. The panelists from KJHK at the University of Kansas were extremely knowledgeable and pretty damn talented. I'm shocked that there's a big enough music scene in Kansas for them to shoot. The stages in the venues are probably the highest points of elevation in the whole state. They went over the basics of the exposure triangle (that I still need to learn how to use properly), how to get press passes, and how to share your work. The best part was that they were students. They were our peers. They understand current trends and the work ethics of contemporary college students. Though, admittedly, none of the other panelists I listened to were out of touch to a significant degree.

After a quick intermission, Lily and I slinked into the radio engineering masterclass. Again, the panelists knew what they were talking about. Makes sense. They shouldn't have led the panel if they didn't. This time, however, I got my ass on a seat instead of pressed up against the wall at the back of a hot, musty room. The main emphasis of the initial conversation was on radio transmission towers, not something that any student would actually be working on. All of the panelists agreed that towers shouldn't be worked on by anyone other than a qualified engineer. I don't think any of the students there were qualified to be within 1500 feet of a radio tower. Our focal point was shifted to securing funding and how to convince your funder to buy you new toys. This is when Lily and I started to tune out a bit. Maybe Lily didn't, but I did. I knew for a fact that Long Beach's ASI was not willing to allocate more funding to 22 West Radio. Definitely not for our sports department. We'd already asked our boss for more, and he asked his, and his asked hers, so on and so forth. The amount of red tape we have to go through to get there is not entirely worth it. For stations that are not as well off as ours, the argument could be made that it'd be very worth it to complain to the higher ups about a lack of funding. 

A walk around the neighborhood commenced later than one would normally do something like that. The neighborhood consisted of Times Square, Broadway, 5th Avenue, and a small fraction of Hell's Kitchen. A similar mission was ingrained in our young minds: See the sites/sights. Wow. Exactly the same as every other tourist in New York. Camera in hand, beer in stomach, and 70s porno shades on my eyes--I was ready to take on the city. It began in Times Square. The grossest part of any city I've ever been in. While I contend that Times Square isn't inherently dirty, the people, the overpriced photo ops, and massive 15+ floor sized ads that shove consumerism down your throat make it gross. You need only visit once. How anyone can spend more than an hour there, without regard for pedestrian traffic jams, makes very little sense to me. Through to the other side, we found ourselves *accidentally* walking down 5th Ave. We knew we'd gone too far when we saw the Gucci store in the lobby of Trump tower. Around midnight, the gang arrived back at the hotel. Bruce and I wanted to grab a pint at the Irish pub a block over, so we bid the others farewell and strode in the door of the most magical place on Earth. Actually, the second most magical place on Earth, the first being Ireland itself. We sat in the back of the pub, ordered 2 pints of Guinness, and conversed about sports, music, and beer. I'd never had a real pint of Guinness before that night and I'm sure my grandpa was looking down on me with pride. 

Bruce and I didn't get back to our room until nearly 3 AM. I had to be up at 7 for breakfast with Ella and Lily before going to the first panel of the day at 9:30. Thankfully, I fell asleep quick, but I wasn't very spritely in the morning. 7 AM rolled around and I rolled over to turn off my alarm. I felt like hell. But I was going to soldier on and make it through breakfast. I texted Ella at 7:30 to confirm we were still going to get food. I never heard back...until 8:45 or so. They had missed their alarms. In all honesty, I don't think I could've stomached anything anyways. As I arrived at the panel the nausea began to kick in. I was trying to keep it together as long as I could. Man, it was bad. The panel wasn't great either. It was a gaggle of studio managers complaining about how shitty their station is and how they don't have money. Solutions were not dished out by the panelists. Spying the door at the back of the room, I made my exit. A combination of nausea and the lack of relevancy (mostly nausea) pushed me to slip out the back door. I needed to sleep off the gurgling stomach and pressure headache. Slumping into bed was the only option.

Ella, Bruce, and I went out to a nice Italian place for dinner that night. Lily had left us to go see a friends play and Kali was seeing a Broadway show. The dinner was fantastic, a killer carbonara. On the walk there, I stopped to take a photo of a police officer standing in the street. I asked him if I could take his photo, to which he responded, "Sure. May I ask why?" I told him that I was in New York, I'd like to take photos of the city the life it surrounds--I didn't exactly say it as gracefully as I did here though. He then said to me, "Oh. You're a tourist." Ah, New York hospitality at its finest. We walked past him again when we left the restaurant, Ella informed me that he was starring daggers into my back when we passed by. The three of us strolled around the city looking at the sights for a while, same as we did the night before. Somehow we ended up back in Times Square and witnessed a gigantic crowd of Jewish kids watching a Black rabbi rap in Yiddish. We decided to retire to Ella and Lily's room around 11:30. Our plan was to pull an all-nighter for our 4:30 wake up. We had to be in the lobby by 5. So we sat around waiting for Lily to get back, indulging in some Coronas minus lime. Bruce and I made the executive decision to drop back to our room to pack up. I had basically packed up completely before we had gone up to Ella's room, so I laid my head on my pillow and instantly drifted off to sleep. I woke up at 4:45 AM to the buzz of my phone getting a call. I sprung up, already clothed, and rushed to grab the rest of my things. 

If my memory serves me right, we landed at 4:45. Our hellish day of travel was finally over. Soon this post will be over too. When we touched down, the pilot told us there was a 1 in 10 chance we were going to make it home that day. We would've gotten stuck in New York. Oh no! That'd be a real shame...I think we all secretly wanted to stay. The next flight home wouldn't have been until Thursday, effectively trapping us in a beautiful city with nothing else to do but explore.

I regret not getting out more when I was there. I never made it to Central Park to see the John Lennon Memorial. That was literally my one goal. My bitch of a hangover prevented me from doing so, which I think is fair. However, I now have an excuse to go back and really enjoy everything the city has to offer. I'll actually know how to use my camera properly the next time I go. And maybe I'll finish a full roll too.