This week, the dice took me to the Flatiron District. Well, let me clarify, it took me to some weird intersection that meets Chelsea, Flatiron, K-Town and NoMad. I chose to go to Flatiron because who the hell comes to NYC and doesn’t have a picture of The Flatiron Building. Tada:

Other options to explore in the neighborhood included Eataly, a giant Restoration Hardware showroom, a random French bakery that no doubt would love to sell me $6 croissants, and Madison Square Park. My good ole’ Swiss buddy lives in Chelsea so I thought I’d give him a ring and see if he wanted to tag along. Because he knows exactly the type of person I am, he suggested that we do a Sex-in-the-City-Miranda&Steve-Brooklyn-Bridge style meeting by walking from opposite sides of 5^th Ave to meet in front of the new LEGO store.

I mean, who am I to refuse an offer that ends at the LEGO store?

Fair Warning: I am about to expound all of my deepest thoughts on LEGOs. Feel free to stop reading if you’re a loser and don’t like LEGOS:

I fucking love LEGOs. I think that they are basically the most intelligently designed children’s toy ever. Ever. I still buy LEGOs. I am a member of their LEGO Club and get my monthly e-mails and look at all the new sets diligently. I told Her that when we had a house, I get a room that I get to display all of my LEGOs in and She can’t do anything about it. If/when there is a new Her, this will still be a truism.

LEGOs make you think, they make you use your imagination. Dreamers and thinkers have way more fun with LEGOs than boring, dumb jocks. (No, there is no repressed resentment here. Truly.) I mean think about it, you get a box full of random blocks of different shapes, sizes and colors. And from this box of random crap, you are supposed to be able to make your dreams a reality. LEGOs inspired my initial interest in aeronautics, architecture, astronauts, and aliens. (Really I just said aliens because everything else started with an A. Seemed to be fitting). The number of different things that I made from a giant, hand-me-down box of LEGOs sustained my imagination for years.

It is really sad to me, that so many of the new LEGO sets are pre-made, follow the instructions sets. It is sad to me that they feel the need to custom make pieces that really only work in one application. I saw one new set that was a Mini Cooper. There were so many rounded off, custom pieces on that one set that you would never see anywhere else. Don’t get me wrong, the Master Builder’s did an amazing job coming up with the design of it, and it was very impressive, but no child will ever break that apart and be like “Fuck yea, I can make a spaceship out of this”.

/End LEGO rant

So anyways we wandered around the LEGO store and watched as some asshole who brought his giant (adorable) dog in the store, got kicked out of the store. After I discovered that my friend both a) didn’t know who R2-D2 was and why the giant LEGO version of him was significant and b) didn’t really know who the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were, we made a hasty departure before I was forced to walk out on him. To redeem himself, he brought me to eat fried chicken.

The chicken itself was uneventful, but they did have something called a “Pie Shake” where they take day old pies and throw them in with ice cream and milk and blend the shit together. Only in America, where the obesity level is only surpassed by the level of human stupidity, can something like this exist. Naturally, I bought one. Because ‘murica.

Side Note: Last week I talked briefly about how my Swiss friend makes everyone swoon. When we were ordering our fried chicken, the two girls that were helping us could not stop talking to him. One went so far as to try to talk him out of buying a bottle of water because she could give him a glass for free. When he remembered that he wanted ranch for his chicken, like 3 people jumped to try and be the one to tell him that they had run out earlier. It was amazing. Pretty sure when I went to go buy the Pie Shake without him, I was afforded no such attention. Hanging out with him sucks.

Moving on, we decided super last minute (like 4:55pm for a 5:15pm show) to go see some random movie. Ran out the door, jumped on the subway and made it to the theatre. Don’t remember what the movie was called. Too lazy to look it up. It was good. Lots of things being shot. Guns everywhere. ‘Murica.

Then we called it a day.

Reflections

There were no great epiphanies this week. It would be too much to hope for, dear reader, for me to enlighten you on a weekly basis. I would almost not even consider this week a random rolling of the dice to explore Manhattan. This was more of a short walking tour, hosted by my friend.

I will say this though, one of the things about New York City that never ceases to amaze me, is how much random shit is ALWAYS happening in the city. I wandered around Madison Square Park and saw that YouTube had held a weekend of science related stuff and was just breaking it down on Sunday. There were apparently all sorts of different stations to do sciency things at. All of it was for kids, but I’m basically just a child anyways (see above LEGO discussion). I always seem to find all the cool shit that I want to do right when I can’t do it anymore. There are always random craft fairs, farmer’s markets, activist marches, crazy people, etc everywhere. You can’t get away from it. This is basically why I consider all ‘real’ New Yorkers to be super jaded. What else can surprise you when every day you are constantly bombarded by the unexpected?

On top of all of the new things that are happening in the city, you really can also basically do whatever you want, whenever you want. Take for instance, the movie. We were eating chicken and pie-shakes and decided that we wanted to see this movie. A quick search of the 10 movie theatres directly accessible to us, and 10 minutes later we were $30 poorer and watching it. New York is basically the only place I can think of where that is a possibility.

I am trying very hard to not hate New York, and days like that make it seem more and more likely that I’ll get there – but then out of no where I find a video like this and am right back where I started… 🙂