Having visitors in New York City is an interesting situation.
It’s not like Midland. I can’t show someone all the major sights within a day.
This is the Tridge, this is Pizza Sam’s and this is the mall. Did you want to go see a movie tonight or go back to the Tridge?
Nor do you have the same type of nostalgic tour guide feeling. Instead, you transform into a salesman, treating your visitor as a potential business client. In Midland, I’m making the case for why this was the greatest town in the world to grow up in, whereas New York, I become Pete Campbell from Mad Men.
I failed miserably with my first guest.
Jon Oldham, my roommate from Freshman and Sophomore year, came out to visit during Hope College’s spring break. I decided it would be a good idea to take him to the St. Patrick’s Day parade. I had no idea that it would be 20,000 screaming high school students—each equipped with Gatorade bottles filled with vodka and juice—who never once thought their, “Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole!” chants ever got old.
When you’re a high school junior or senior, you think it’s ridiculous that the drinking age is 21. When you’re 21, and look at a high school junior or senior on St. Patty’s Day, you suddenly think the age should be pushed back to 35.
The walk back to the apartment, well, let me put it this way, imagine one of those Chinese videos with someone cramming 200 people onto a bus. Imagine you are the last person crammed in, but need to get back to your friend who’s sitting in the furthest seat. That was the equivalent of our walk down 44th street trying to escape the mess of Fifth Avenue.
Was it fun? See here’s the problem. Our instinct when we see a massive crowd is to take a picture message and triumphantly send it back to all of our friends. When they reply, “Wow! That looks incredible, you’re so lucky to be in New York City for St. Patrick’s Day!” you can’t be the guy that responds, “Actually, it’s miserable, I’m sweaty, I just watched a 16-year-old boy squeeze a girl’s butt then hide back away in the crowd, and the ‘Ole!’ chant has just started for the 400th time.”
We assume that events like Mardi Gras or New Year’s Eve in Times Square are amazing, but at the same time, we would never go out of our way to be involved in a Chinese bus cram.
On Jon’s final day, the streets may have been emptier, but the result was even more of a disaster. Our morning walk to the subway, which was only maybe the equivalent to the length of a football field, started out on a bad note with the rain coming down and thunder crackling. Neither of us had an umbrella, and both of us had on our glasses, which become utterly useless in the rain.
The first sight was an ambulance and two cop cars in the street. A Land Rover was stopped in the middle of the road and lying down in front of the massive vehicle was a lady on her back, in a position that best resembled a dead June bug. Was she dead? No, but she seemed to prefer to answer the police man’s questions while lying down on her back.
We crossed the street and made our way into Brooklyn Bagel. Jon was wheeling along his suitcase and as he made a turn, somehow a 70-year-old Asian lady walking behind us miscalculated her steps, thus tripping over one of the wheels and falling slowly to the ground.
She lay on the ground looking up at the sky with a strange look of terror in her eyes. I helped her up, she continued along and Jon looked at me with a, “Get me the hell out of here” expression on his face.
Of course, when we hopped on the N train, there was a “delay” due to a problem with the tracks ahead. All I could picture was June bug lady lying in the middle with the conductor screaming at her to get a move on.
Eventually, Jon was able to leave the city, and honestly, it may take him 20 years to ever even consider coming back.
So needless to say, I felt a sense of pressure when my friend Nick visited earlier this week. I wanted to show him that this city was not complete chaos and there were more sights to see than ladies falling to the ground.
My first spot was Pete’s Tavern, the oldest bar in all of Manhattan. Not many bars in this country can say they were established in 1864 and have been running non-stop ever since. During prohibition, Pete’s Tavern disguised itself as a flower shop, and continued to quench the thirst of New Yorkers.
We had a little trouble finding the location, but once we did, I was very pleased with how everything looked. The walls were covered in pictures of famous people standing next to the owner, and the bar looked like one you would find in an Old Western movie’s saloon scene. Everything was dimly lit and a couple mounted barrels labeled “Pete’s Tavern, 1864” were placed over the doorway.
Our waiter looked considerably nervous. He took our order (both of us ordered hamburgers and the house ale) and as we handed him the menus he said, “Sorry, I’m new, I just wanted to check and make sure I got everything right.” The kid flipped through the menu’s pages and said, “I know your burgers come with a salad (not at all true), but I’m seeing if they come with fries too (actually true).”
At that point, I wish Nick and I would have seized the moment and said something like, “Yeah, it comes with a complementary order of buffalo wings and a dessert,” but neither of us had the lack of heart to pull it off.
After we devoured our burgers with fries, and each of us took down two reasonably sized house ales, the waiter came back with the bill. Surprisingly, the combined total was $52, which for New York, is a really low price for dinner and two beers. We asked to split the bill and handed the waiter our cards. When he came back with our cards and receipts, he was starting to gain a little bit of confidence. With a slight sense of semi-bravado he said to us, “Ok guys, just sign here and enjoy your night.”
As he began walking away, I looked at the table, then—hating to kill his momentum—said, “Wait, do you have a pen?”
Confidence was shaken. Flustered now, he reached into his waiter’s belt thing and placed a pen onto the table. He knew he had just blown the lead he had built.
Nick and I began discussing the right tip to give him. At $52, a 15 percent tip comes out right around $8, which makes the total an even $60. Perfect. The waiter did not do a bad job and it’d be nice to put down a few extra bills of encouragement for the young guy, but with the “I know it comes with a salad” false hope he gave us and the invisible pen blunder, we ultimately decided $8 was the right amount to say, “Hey man, you did a good job, but there’s still some room for improvement.”
I wrote down the tip, signed my name and we made our way out to the street.
“Excuse me!” the waiter’s supervisor said running after us with a receipt in hand. Both of us expected her to scold us for the $8 tip.
“Would it really have killed ya to make it an even $10?!”
But instead, she simply was asking for Nick to sign his copy of the receipt.
We continued on with our night going to a comedy show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. Our tickets were $5 a piece, and the show consisted of two sketch comedy groups. The first group was not very good, but the second group had the whole room laughing for almost the entire time. All until their final sketch.
In the final sketch, one couple and another guy were sitting in chairs awaiting a guest. The couple begins explaining to the guy that he’ll absolutely love the girl who’s coming to join them for dinner. She’s funny, nice, but she does have a minor problem.
“She never stops screaming,” the wife explains.
Nick and I look at each other fearing that this description means exactly what it seemingly means. Sure enough, out comes the girl screaming as loud as she can, over, and over and over again. Thirty seconds in and I wished I was back in the St. Patty’s Day chaos hearing the repeated ‘Ole!’ chants.
After the show, we went back to the apartment building and turned on Game 4 of the Dallas Mavericks vs. Oklahoma City Thunder series. The Thunder had the lead and were looking absolutely dominant. When the lead hit 15 points with five minutes left to go, I asked Nick if he wanted to go out and get a $1 slice of Two Bros Pizza.
After eating the pizza, and seeing a man being arrested, we made our way over to Times Square. I figured it was late enough, and since it was only a Monday, the area would not be very crowded.
As we’re walking down the street, we look over at one of the giant screens and see the Mavericks have the lead over the Thunder in overtime.
Wait… what???
The screen flips over to highlights from The View and Dancing With The Stars, as if the three video clips are of equal importance. We quickly scramble over to the outside of some sporting goods store and watch the screen inside.
Dallas is going to win this game. How in the world did this happen?
Watching the game with us was a French man, whose NBA knowledge seemed to end at 1995.
“Eh, who iz this Oklahoma team?” asks Frenchman.
“They used to be the Seattle Supersonics, but now play in Oklahoma City,” I replied.
“So, ze Seattle, they have no more team?”
“Yeah, it happened a couple years ago.”
-Pause-
“I loved Michael Jordan,” the Frenchman said as if Jordan used to play for the Supersonics. “I watched him in eh, 1995, he was very good. So, iz Seattle close to the Oklahoma?”
“Yeah, it’s about 15 hours,” I said confidently even though a Mapquest search later on would show me I had undersold the time by about 15 hours.
Nick left the next day and I spent the first part of work reading about what happened to the Thunder down the stretch of Game 4. Two nights later, I saw the Thunder collapse again, not nearly the same level of a collapse, but they still had that game in their hands before blowing it in the last two minutes.
All I could relate the Thunder’s late game mistakes to were the waiter at Pete Tavern’s late dinner mistake with the forgotten pen and the comedy group’s choice of ending an otherwise hilarious 30 minutes with a screaming lady. For the waiter, he was young and inexperienced and will probably never make that mistake again. For the comedy group, they will hopefully learn in the future to end on their best sketch, rather than leaving the most lasting memory as their worst idea.
The Thunder will learn from this series. Against Denver, they learned how to win a series against a talented team. Against the Memphis Grizzlies, they learned how to close out a tough opponent, but were going up against another relatively young team who was trying to learn the same lessons. Against Dallas, the Thunder met a team full of veteran players that have been around long enough that they won’t make silly mistakes down the stretch and will save their best performances for last.
Eventually, the Thunder will be the Mavericks, schooling a young and inexperienced team down the stretch of big playoff games. Unfortunately for Thunder fans, there will be years of pain before this team has that memorable visit to the NBA Playoffs that lasts into June.
For now, they are the fallen team, lying on their backpacks like a dead June bug.
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