Category Travel

Mellzah vs the city of New York, Also Known As My Badly Photoshopped Vacation

We took an Amtrak train from Albany to NYC: normally I’m pro renting a car on trips, but in this instance, I wanted nothing to do with driving in New York City proper. Or finding parking. Or paying for parking. Or any of it, really. So the train it was, and I discovered that train travel is actually really awesome. The seats are enormous, as is the gap between them. They recline enough so you can actually sleep and you don’t have to worry about cracking into someone’s knees when doing so. I loved it, and I’m definitely going to explore my options for future travel by train. But enough of my gushing: I was feeling a little off when we left Albany. By the time we pulled into Penn Station, it hurt to swallow and my head felt even larger than normal. Uh-oh. But maybe I wasn’t getting sick. Maybe all I needed was a rest in the hotel room and I’d be ready for a fresh start the following morning.

NOPE. By the next morning, a full blown war was raging in my body. Sore throat, stuffy head, cold sweats…the works. Oh, and I got my period, too. Fuck me, right? It wasn’t fair. I hadn’t licked a subway pole or eaten at Subway! But colds don’t give a damn about fair, and I was forced to cut down my NYC to-do list significantly. So without further ado, here’s the badly photoshopped vacation I should have had:

Brooklyn Museum Mini Statue of LibertyOriginal photo by Neil R

Holy shit, it’s the smaller Statue of Liberty in Brooklyn outside the Brooklyn Museum! Why is there snow on the ground in August? Quiet, you!  I would have been all over their Egyptian installations as well as their 19th century modern exhibit. Now I can only imagine how awesome it could have been.

cronutOriginal photo by Rachel Lovinger

Wow, a cronut from Dominique Ansel Bakery! So delicious! So trendy! I love trendy food! And eating! I would have gotten up at the asscrack of dawn and waited in line for an hour to eat this, at which point I probably would have pronounced it not worth getting up for, but the point of the thing is to try it, not enjoy it.

 

Giant Penny NYCOriginal photo by Danny Birchall

I found…a giant penny! Could this be the best day of my life? I actually went looking for this thing because y’all know I’ve got a thing for pennies but I think the address listed in Roadside America was a bit off, so it eluded me and I was too sick and crabby to keep looking.

MMuseummOriginal photo by Panda073

Mmuseumm, NYC’s smallest museum. Located in an alley, only open on the weekends, collections rotate but once included a selection of fake vomit, and the permanent collection includes the shoe thrown at George W Bush. I live for this shit.

Ninja RestaurantOriginal photo by Alan Teo

What do I love more than overpriced food in a kitschy setting where there’s an element of fake danger and possibly things are lit on fire for my amusement and the whole thing is attached to a gift shop? Fucking nothing. I would have eaten every goddamn tofu ninja star in the place, bought the t-shirt, and ninji-chopped things on the way back to the hotel.

NYC Museum of ScienceOriginal photo by Adnan Islam

The NY Museum of Science in Queens has a minigolf course that teaches you about science while you curse at a ball and artificially lower your score. I’m a scientist. I fucking love mini golf. I’ve been known to enjoy a museum in my time.

Obscura OdditiesOriginal photo by dishfunctional

I would have bought so much shit for our house at Obscura Antiques and Oddities. I want my house to look like a creepy-ass museum full of shit that people have no idea what to do with when I’m dead. Maybe we would have run into Amy Sedaris who supposedly lives down the street and shops there all the time. Maybe my life would have been complete.

Queens MuseumOriginal photo by Katie

The Queens Museum has a bunch of the remaining World’s Fair stuff (there’s another one coming soon, right? Before Friday?) and a sweet panorama of 1964 New York in perfect miniature scale. YES. Fuck yes. I would have totally gone if I didn’t have a sobbing breakdown in Grand Central Station about how tired and sick I was!

Smorgasburg BrooklynOriginal photo by Howard Walfish

Smorgasburg Brooklyn, an addition to the Brooklyn flea with 150 bomb-ass food stations and a killer view? I would have eaten myself poor or to death, whichever came first.

 

Rockefeller CenterOriginal photo by Flodigrip’s World

Wow, we’re on top of the world! Look at all of those sights we could have seen!

NY Transit Museum Subway CarOriginal photo by Kevin Case

Public transit in NYC is awesome. Maybe not 100% of the time if you’re commuting or what have you, but it’s generally easy to get where you want to go and transparent to visitors which makes it a million times better than the system in Seattle, which I have to assume was set up and is administered by people who actively hate people who take public transit. At the Transit Museum,  I was going to learn their secrets and bring them back home, like a hero.

Greenwood CemeteryOriginal photo by Jason Eppink

Inside the Greenwood Cemetery is a statue that originally stood at City Hall, was moved to Queens, and was eventually banished to the cemetery for being too ugly and offensive. A statue with a mostly nude man stomping on mermaids called The Triumph of Civic Virtue. A statue that Anthony “Dick Pic” Weiner wanted to try and sell on Craigslist. That’s right, that guy was offended by this statue. I wanted to bear witness to it in person.

OMG Amy PoehlerOriginal photo by Hard Seat Sleeper

Oh wow, we got tickets to Asssscat 3000 and Amy Poehler was there! She’s so funny and awesome! I’m so glad I was able to go instead of spending the night shivering and sweating in a hotel room!

Ghostbusters BuildingOriginal photo by Charlie Phillips

Oh wow, it’s the Ghostbusters building! And it’s still haunted by Slimer! Good thing we’re there and kitted out in ghost-fighting Viking gear!

MurricaOriginal photo by Josullivan.59

Amurrica! Statue of Liberty! I feel so patriotic in its presence, like I could haul around a ton of guns in public because that’s what patriots do! I definitely didn’t just take a peek at it in the distance before boarding the Staten Island Ferry and decide to turn around and go back to the hotel because “eh, I’ve seen it”. No way, it was totally inspiriring. Bonus: what it would have looked like if we went up into the crown if tickets hadn’t sold out months before I even thought to check!

Ghostbusters Statue of Liberty Head

 

 

 

All photos used under a creative commons remix  license, some non-commercial, some share-alike, with the exception of the last photo which is a screencap of Ghostbusters II and used entirely without permission. Amy Poehler also appears without her knowledge or permission.

NY State Museum in Albany

ny-museum-sesame-street

ny-museum-steam

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america-full-of-unicorns

hooved-fox

ny-museum-opossumI want to get my hands on a reproduction copy of Icones animalum now.

bad-selfieI wanted to take a picture in front of this giant drawing of old-timey NY and then make it look like I was part of it, but then felt deep embarrassment over taking a selfie in a museum so I didn’t line it up properly and this is what we ended up with. I feel like I’m in the “Take On Me” video.

anit-fertility-symbol“Anti-Fertility Symbol” by Megan Cavanaugh. This would have been a delightful addition to my “Never Gonna Have a Baby” shower.

  Albany’s Cultural Education building is jam-packed with public services: the NY State Archives, the NY State Library (one of the largest libraries in the world!), and the NY State Museum. I only had time to check out the NY State Museum, and even that was very limited as I needed to hoof it back to the hotel and make myself a presentable wedding guest, so I was only able to see one of their (enormous) floors. I was able to learn a bit about the history of New York City as well as some of the history of Albany and New York State, see some of the creatures of the nearby Adirondack mountains, check out their impressive mineral collection, and see the “Best of SUNY” art exhibit. My only complaint is that it’s not laid out very well. Things seem to be jammed in where there’s physical space instead of where they belong: natural history is mixed in with urban history, their 9/11 stuff is split between the NYC area and the Adirondack Wilderness area, and it makes the museum even more difficult to navigate when it’s already a labyrinth. I’d also like for monitors placed so there’s easy access of information without obscuring the exhibit itself, but that’s just nitpicking. It’s free (donations accepted and recommended — at $5 per person, it’s still a bargain) and definitely worth checking out if you’re in Albany, but not necessarily worth going out of your way to visit.    

Spotted on the Roadside: A Colossal Clog in Albany, NY

Albany is proud of their Dutch heritage, and in 2012, installed ten huge clogs (six at a whopping seven feet long, four at three feet long) throughout the city as part of the “Stand in the Soles of Albany” program. This clog, however, might have gone rogue, as all of the clog installations were supposed to be removed in May 2013, and this bears out as I didn’t see any other clogs on my wanderings through the city, and I definitely visited some of the other  installation locations.  If they need ideas for future clog uses, I’d like to see them hollowed out and turned into clog cars for a clog parade where they could clog along, clogging traffic. Clog.

Spotted on Lodge St in Albany, NY