Thinking Buses

This morning I took the bus to work. Normally, I am a strict subway girl and I only revert to the bus when the subway breaks down and I don't mind being late to work. Today I had a spare twenty minutes and couldn't really justify not taking the bus to myself. Bizarrely, the bus is a kind of a luxury to me. It offers me space, new sites and fantastic people-watching, but, most importantly and most splendidly, it offers me time. The subway is merely a way to get from A to B as quickly as possible and with as little human interaction as possible. But the bus. The bus is a time machine. The bus is affected by weather and other people and madcap taxi drivers and traffic and stop lights with the result that the bus is going to take as long as it's going to take no matter your hurry or your deadline.

To some this may seem a trifle inconvenient or even frustrating. But not to me. To me, the bus gives me the gift of this time spent in traffic that the subway so neatly avoids. On the bus you simply can't do anything other than await your stop. And this gives me the ultimate luxury: time to simply sit and think.

I always get on the bus with the absolute best of thinking intentions. I'm going to finally plan out the plot to that novel I've always wanted to write or I'm going to make a mental to-do list of things I need to buy and errands I need to run. But I never do. I've been (magically!) given an hour to just think, it hardly seems appropriate to waste it on mundane topics I could think about anywhere and anytime. So my mind inevitably wanders over topics that I wouldn't get to think about otherwise: my future life-plans (real and fantasy), my personal life, places I’d like to live, people I know, interactions I’ve had, animals I’ve seen. This doesn't make any of these topics unimportant. No, oftentimes what I think about on the bus is the most important thinking I'll do all day. It's a beautiful thing, watching the city blur by as it shifts from the residential pre-wars of the Upper East Side to the midtown glassy high-rises and back down to the low-scale of the East Village, all the while thinking about your life and the things that actually matter, not the insignificant things like errands that you must do in a day.

So I’m grateful for the bus this morning and the time it bestowed upon me and the thoughts I therefore had time to think.

I [heart] New York?

Since my week is rapidly becoming one of those where I end the days shouting purposelessly from our roof garden "I HATE CITIES WHAT AM I DOING HERE?!" I thought it might be a good idea for my mental health to think more about what I like about cities, namely the one I'm in, New York.

1. Public Transportation! Even if the subway never seems to be at the cross-street I want and the bus doesn't come when I am passing out from walking too far, I have got to give New York some serious props for their public transportation system. I love how easy they are to use, how convenient they are (yeah, I know, I'm in Manhattan and things can get dicey in the outer boroughs, but props!) and, generally, how on time they are even at rush hour. Perhaps this is just the 6 train and I'm pampered, but at the very least New York gets props for the 6 train.

2. Parks! New York is best known for Central Park and that is probably my favorite part of the city, but there are all these other, lesser-known parks scattered all over the place to generally improve your City experience. You can go to these lovely parks and pretend you're even not in the City and try to star-gaze (although, let's face it, there's probably still going to be too much light pollution to do so). At the very least, you can vicariously enjoy some puppy love since many of these little parks have great dog runs (notably Union Square and Tompkins Square Parks).

3. Helpful Hobos! If you are ever lost in New York, odds are there will be some kind of homeless person on hand to help you find your way. As I wandered aimlessly with friends this Monday looking for a seemingly invisible Thai restaurant (see below), a Helpful Hobo helped us out and pointed us in the right direction, only afterwards soliciting us for our spare change. I happily emptied my purse of its loose change and then enjoyed some high quality dumplings. (Admittedly, you're just as likely to run into the Helpful Hobo's polar opposite, the Insane Itinerant, but here's hoping for the former!)

4. Food! Everywhere! Say you want some Thai food at eleven o'clock at night. I defy you to find a place where it would be so readily available (outside Thailand!). Any given street is entirely likely to have twelve different kinds of food so you need never be bored on your nights out. And, yes, some of the best pizza in the world is here if you want to play it safe.

5. Subway Performers! Yeah, subway panhandling can be at best annoying, but the subway performers in New York are not just asking for your money, they are playing their hearts out for it and they rock! Apparently, there is this intense interviewing process before you are allowed to play in the subway and, I have to say, whatever the system is, it works! Subway performers are remarkably talented and extremely varied in terms of their talent. I've seen a guy play a bunch of old cans and it was just as amazing as a pair of middle-aged doo wop brothers who sometimes haunt the 6. Equally impressive, I'm told, was a group of subway car break dancers seen on the R Train. And let's not forget the mournful and mysterious Chinese stringed instrument played beautifully by the old man outside the E and V trains. The list could go on, but they are all amazing, talented people and they can really brighten up a day with their music, dancing or what have you!

That said, I'm off to go partake of number one and maybe number 5, if I'm lucky.

The Fiction and Reality of Central Meeting Places

As some of you might be aware, I am a rather big fan of the television show How I Met Your Mother. I see them at McClaren’s week in and week out and feel a surge of slight envy that they have their little group and their little hang and that they—gasp—actually meet people at this place. It turns out that McClaren’s is actually based on place in New York called McGee’s. It looks basically like McClaren’s and today I felt compelled to seek it out.

Like any good internet stalker, I took my first steps online to learn more about McGee’s. I found this nice little piece about it: “McGee's is a lively Irish Pub with a strong emphasis on great food and drinks as well as friendly service. Our main bar area boasts big screens, surround sound and a huge selection of draft and bottled beers. This pub offers a lot of booths comfortable for dining and sports viewing. McGee's serves hamburgers, salads, potato skins, fried calamari and a variety of other appetizers for guests to enjoy.” Sounds yummy, I thought to myself. So now McGee’s/McClaren’s is a good time, a good place to meet people and it has good food! Forgive me if the jealousy was more than a little slight at this point.

Then I stopped and thought about it. I often think wistfully back to my Northampton days as some kind of heyday that I can never replicate. There was a bit of a tradition (I say it this way because we went with only slight regularity but often enough that it could be called a tradition) for me and my three friends to go out to a place called FitzWilly’s. It too could be characterized as a lively Irish pub with strong emphasis on great food and drinks. It too has a lot of comfortable booths as well as a bar (and even more bar next door at the Toasted Owl if the FitzWilly bar was just too small for you). And it too has some great potato skins that we almost always ordered.

And that’s about when I had a rather pleasant realization. All that time I was watching How I Met Your Mother (or Friends or Seinfeld or really any show with a central meeting place) and feeling those twinges of envy, I was basically living the dream. I had my three friends and we went out to FitzWilly’s and drank and ate burgers and potato skins and laughed and generally had a good time. So while this may be bittersweet, I guess it reinforces those old lessons about being grateful for the present and being careful what you wish for. Who knows? You may have already had it.