i went to new york for a week.

i was thinking i would write blogs everyday about all the exciting things i was seeing and doing and eating and holy shit! new york city, wooooooooo! but, instead, i felt really comfortable there and just wanted to sort of hang around and make friends with bartenders and take pictures of clouds and pretty much do everything i would do at home.

i mean, we saw all the boroughs.
we saw the touristy bullshit.
i ate a hotdog at 30 rock.
we walked till our legs ached.
we made fun of students in greenwich,
avoided suits in hell's kitchen,
raged with drunks in the east village.
we ate bbq chicken in harlem.
i got freaked out by coney island.
we saw the ocean and some mountains.
i eavesdropped thick accents.
i rummaged through chinatown.
central park is a beautiful sanctuary
and yoo-hoo is a bizarre beverage.

i thought that i didn't want to leave on our last night. it was starting to feel normal to wake up in our little expensive apartment. i could navigate my way around easily. i get lost in the fucking eaton centre but i know the new york subway system surprisingly well. i think i'd always feel like a tourist in that city though. i'm sure most people do. toronto has a lot of the same characteristics and it's also somewhere for small towners to flock to. the big city and all that. while it was easily growing familiar - it wasn't home.

you know, i'll always feel embarassed buying a record that was made fun of in high fidelity but getting the big chill soundtrack on vinyl from a dude that looks like jim jarmusch in a brooklyn dirt mall - well, that tops it. and, for me, it sums up new york.

i guess it was great. i guess traveling is a strange trip. (yeah, yeah... i know)
i guess it's just something we have to do to escape from our own lives, sometimes.
i guess the pictures tell a better story than i ever could.

click here for the whole set: flickr.