New York City / Represent / Represent

New York City is the greatest city in the world. And if you disagree here are some simple instructions: 1.) Fly to New York City. 2.) Buy a Metrocard and take the subway into Manhattan. 3.) Figure out which river you’re nearest to, the Hudson or the East River. 4.) Walk to that river. 5.) Then jump in. Yeah, you heard me — jump in a river.

Remember when David Letterman coined the phrase, “Our city can kick your city’s ass”? Well, I’m trying to behave myself and trying not to invoke those kinds of words — too confrontational? — so just roll with my punches here for a moment. It’s just that NYC does this to me ... it hypes me up, like fourth-quarter, bottom-of-the-ninth, the-jury-has-come-to-a-verdict hype. It makes me wish I had this kind of enthusiasm for the place I did live, but alas, Phoenix hardly compares.

So, yeah, I think pretty highly of New York City. But before I continue further I must admit something: I’m not that well traveled. Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, Boston … haven’t been to any of them. I intend to visit them all at some point — Boston next week — but until I start making that Dan Rather money — or I just make the switch to the Dark Side ... public relations — I’m going to have to piece together my comparison guide from my limited travels thus far, which includes parts of Utah, New Mexico, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and some of the touristy spots of Mexico.

But here’s a wild idea: even if those other cities are amazing, which I’m sure they are, I doubt they would unseat NYC on my charts at this point. It just seems very unlikely. See, I really love New York City. I’m talking deep infatuation here. From the moment Sara and I stepped off the A Train in Downtown, I was on this cloud. I didn’t descend from it until I was back in Phoenix admiring the blandness stream past on a highway to nowhere. Yes, Phoenix is my home, but after NYC it feels like a dramatic plunge down the desirability index.

My last trip to the Big Apple, last June, was one of self-discovery. I was mostly alone, walking the city with nothing more than a camera and this impossibly ambitious goal to see every square inch of everything. This trip, though, had several themes: parks and bakeries were two of the dominant ones. Brooklyn, the borough I saw the least last time, was also a prominent theme. We stayed with Sara’s very awesome cousin Alex, who pointed us to some very cool attractions, like the Neo-Futurist’s 30-play/60-minute Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, the 100-meter dash of off-off Broadway plays. Alex and her boyfriend, Aiden, live in Brooklyn Heights, which is just across the river from Manhattan. Walk 60 feet from their front door and you’re staring at the New York City Skyline — pretty much amazing in every way. Nearly as close to that view is the subway entrance that hauled us to and fro from Manhattan. We couldn’t have asked for a better location; or better tour guides.

Alex also pointed us in the general direction of some really good dessert places, like City Bakery with their world-famous hot chocolate, Magnolia Bakery, Momofuku Milk Bar and Cake & Shake, which operates out of a little baby-blue cart at Washington Square Park and at the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sara’s favorite was City Bakery, where we nibbled on a giant apple muffin thing (non-technical term); my fave was Cake & Shake, where we had these delicious filled cupcakes. Funniest part about the bakeries: while we were looking for these locations (and in some cases, not looking for them) we would run across dozens of other bakeries. If we tried to hit every one, we’d die of heart attacks right around the time my wallet ran dry. Luckily, when we were full of desserts, we’d just find the nearest park for a digestion break.

I have a thing for parks. All of them. Bryant, Madison Square, Washington Square, Central Park, Union Square. We did all of them. Sara seemed confused why I would deviate from our path to hit these lush green blocks. They’re nice places to take little breaks after walking (we walked half of Manhattan after all), but they were also just beautiful places to relax. Parks in Arizona are irrigated fields with soccer goalposts. Maybe they have trees or, more likely, desert shrubs. But a NYC park is like paradise: winding paths, park benches, manicured lawns, dense trees providing shade, historical concrete structures and fountains. I love them, especially how they attract the people like green little beacons amid all the glass and steel.

Sara and I became very proficient subway users. We learned how to use our Metrocards without any help, and by the end of the trip we were commuting like regulars, even making complicated transfers with ease — only once did I get us completely turned around. On Sunday, we jumped on the F Train and rode it all the way out to Coney Island, which was a rather interesting experience. September is pretty much when Coney starts shutting down, so not much was open and the boardwalk was filled with derelict homeless people and small pockets of tourists. And it was cold — the coldest we’d been so far. We sat on the boardwalk looking out at the ocean and the seagulls, and simply shrugged our shoulders: “Yep, that’s it, I guess.” And we left. No Cyclone, no Wonder Wheel, no Warriors t-shirts, no Midway game. Coney Island was kinda sad.

We did end with a bang, though, by grabbing original Nathan’s hot dogs before we left. Nathan’s is one of the most famous hot dog spots in the world, and the location of the annual Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest, where Kobayashi and Joey “Jaws” Chestnut race to eat enough hot dogs to feed all of Darfur for a week.

I’m leaving a lot of stuff out, and, well, I’m packing for our Florida trip, which starts in less than 12 hours, so I’m going to stop right there with the transitions and stuff. Here’s a bulleted list of other stuff that happened:

• While we were waiting to go into the Neo-Futurist show, this girl behind us in line had this conversation with her friend. keep in mind she said this stuff kinda loud. Woman: “So we were, like, at this concert, and we did this drug, like PX-4 or something like that. It was really mellow and awesome, and I could just feel everything. So me and this guy were having sex in his tent, and afterwards I was kinda laying there naked in this post-orgasmic bliss and I just all of the sudden really wanted some soup.”

• We were at Ground Zero actually on Sept. 11. You’d think it would have been reverent and peaceful, but not really. It was neat to hear the families reading out the names of the victims, but beyond that it was kinda chaos down there: protesters, demonstrators, religious nutjobs, people selling 9/11 memorabilia ... it was all very disrespectful. And some people think the Muslims are going to ruin everything when it looks as though Christians have done their fair share of desecration down there.

• We had a celebrity sighting: Gwen Stefani. We were walking through SoHo and we saw the paparazzi milling around outside a store. We waited around for like 30 seconds and Gwen and her kid strolled out. I’ve photographed her before, and this time she was taller than I remember.

• We shopped at Mario Batali’s new restaurant/grocery store, Eataly. Very cool! We were looking for birthday gifts for my dad, who loves to cook, especially Italian dishes. We'd of love to have ate there but it was mass pandemonium for Mario's food.

• When we couldn’t get tickets to see The Addams Family, we jumped over to 42nd Street to a movie theater to see The American. I loved it; the rest of the theater was too amped up from Michael Bay movies to give it a shot — no attention spans anymore, geez! Sara slept through most of it. The movie theater was like seven stories up. We literally rode the Stairway to Heaven to get to this movie. And we walked far once we were in the theater, too. Once we were in our seats I was sure we were in East Jersey.

• On one of the subway stations we saw these teens sitting on the edge of the platform with their legs dangling off the sides. This short little NYPD female officer jumped out of her pants to go yell at them: “You gotta be kiddin’ me?!?! Wanna lose your legs?!” She looked and sounded like Michelle Rodriguez (Sara pointed this out). Now, for the life of me, I can’t remember what she really looks and sounds like. All I can picture is the real Michelle Rodriguez.

• On the plane ride home we sat behind JetBlue’s founder David Neeleman. He fell asleep on a pillow. When he woke up his hair was messed up. Haha! CEO with messy hair! (I did think it was commendable he was riding in the back with us chumps, though.)

• We went to the MET, but only to see the Bambu exhibit on the rooftop garden. But while we were there, we might as well see the rest of the museum, right? I wanted to see some Monet, Van Gogh or Pollock. But we pretty much walked right past some famous works. We just wanted to see that bamboo sculpture. I kinda felt like Godard's Band a parte, where the people race through the Louvre. We didn't run, though, nor did we break any speed records. On a side note, the Bambu exhibit was simply amazing!

NYC, I'll miss you! see you in several weeks!