48 Hours In New York

I started this weekend by getting on an early flight to JFK. By noon (3 p.m. local time) I was riding through the hot city, all sticky like a glazed donut, on an A train express to the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn—where Matt and Mimi of Cape Cod wedding fame now live with their two dogs who both closely resemble stuffed baby seals.

We were back East for just over 48 hours. A quick trip to Get Out Of Town and help Matt celebrate his birthday. The goal was not tourism, but simply real life. As such, I did not see the Empire State Building or the Statue Of Liberty, just wandered around Brooklyn eating and drinking and skateboarding and soaking in all the general lawlessness and spontaneous joy of that great, old city on a summer weekend.

Vegetable-arian food. From ramen to cornmeal french toast, I ate a lot of incendiary food while I was there. My favorite, I think, was the oyster mushroom banh mi from Toad Style. I'm always trying to eat those spicy, saucy sandwiches, but I've only ever seen them made with tofu, and I don't really care about tofu—don't hate it and don't love it, but generally find it hard to digest. In other words, tofu doesn't close the deal for me. Mushrooms though!

A shot and a beer. Nowhere else on the planet do I find myself ordering a shot and a beer when I walk into a bar. But in New York, that's how they do it. Not only is it the cheapest way to consume alcohol in an expensive city, it's a super easy way to get on a vacation tilt-awhirl. Weeeeeee!

Skatepark tourism. We did a wee skatepark tour through Brooklyn. There's loads of new ones. I had fun at each one—if not skating, then people watching. From scene to style, New York is super different from Portland, almost the opposite, you could say. I dig watching and observing that stuff, from a sociological standpoint. Also, I dig fun. Coincidentally, that's what skateboarding is.