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This was not the Sunday I planned to have
May. 3rd, 2010 01:44 pmSaturday night when I went to bed, I had sort of vague plans that I might go running in the morning. Maybe go to the grocery store since I appear to be out of vegetables. Probably clear out some of the DVR backlog.
When I woke up on Sunday, I thought maybe I'd go see The Losers.
So obviously, what I ended up doing was buying a last-minute ticket to see American Idiot again, spending a fair amount of time standing in Times Square looking at either the ABC News ticker's blurb about Times Square or the anti-nuke march to the UN, and discovering that one of my favorite chain restaurants from LA has two locations in New York.
( So, an odd day for me. Good, but odd. )
I am totally a sucker for regional chains when I travel to places I used to live. Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes, Jack in the Box (sourdough jack! curly fries!) and In 'n' Out are probably the top on my list. I can add Waffle House to those now that I'm out of the south. Baja Fresh Mexican Grill was the closest restaurant to campus to the west. We ate there...a lot. I am a little saddened by how excited I was to see the sign on Broadway. And considering that Baja, like the Gap, was totally cut off from the Times Square foot traffic, I can justify being a chain-store sucker by saying that spending my money there was my capitalist good deed for the day.
Once I had dinner in hand a clear a path back to Grand Central, the rest of the day was uneventful.
Last month when I went into the city I saw a guy carrying a sign asking for pot money. Last week, I saw someone panhandling with a cat. A cat in a sweater, even, pretty healthy looking for all that, and eating and drinking, just hanging out on 5th Avenue, as you do. Sunday, I walked past a guy holding a cardboard sign that said "buy me a beer." I can't help but feel that the cleaner, shinier Times Square of the past 15 years even extends to the panhandlers, like there's a screening process that you can only have your hand out in Manhattan if you have a gimmick. Or maybe the city is actually providing services to all of the indigent New Yorkers in the midst of record homelessness in the city, and no one else needs to beg to eat.
When I woke up on Sunday, I thought maybe I'd go see The Losers.
So obviously, what I ended up doing was buying a last-minute ticket to see American Idiot again, spending a fair amount of time standing in Times Square looking at either the ABC News ticker's blurb about Times Square or the anti-nuke march to the UN, and discovering that one of my favorite chain restaurants from LA has two locations in New York.
( So, an odd day for me. Good, but odd. )
I am totally a sucker for regional chains when I travel to places I used to live. Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes, Jack in the Box (sourdough jack! curly fries!) and In 'n' Out are probably the top on my list. I can add Waffle House to those now that I'm out of the south. Baja Fresh Mexican Grill was the closest restaurant to campus to the west. We ate there...a lot. I am a little saddened by how excited I was to see the sign on Broadway. And considering that Baja, like the Gap, was totally cut off from the Times Square foot traffic, I can justify being a chain-store sucker by saying that spending my money there was my capitalist good deed for the day.
Once I had dinner in hand a clear a path back to Grand Central, the rest of the day was uneventful.
Last month when I went into the city I saw a guy carrying a sign asking for pot money. Last week, I saw someone panhandling with a cat. A cat in a sweater, even, pretty healthy looking for all that, and eating and drinking, just hanging out on 5th Avenue, as you do. Sunday, I walked past a guy holding a cardboard sign that said "buy me a beer." I can't help but feel that the cleaner, shinier Times Square of the past 15 years even extends to the panhandlers, like there's a screening process that you can only have your hand out in Manhattan if you have a gimmick. Or maybe the city is actually providing services to all of the indigent New Yorkers in the midst of record homelessness in the city, and no one else needs to beg to eat.
