Hi there!

My name is Nick, and I’ve been spending some time in New York. This is what New York looks like:

Day 4 means I’m past the halfway point of my trip, which is a fact also evident in my daily itineraries as they evolve from “CLIMB TO THE TOP OF THIS” and “SEE AS MUCH AS I CAN OF THAT” to “FIND A HALF-DECENT LAUNDROMAT THAT’S ON THE WAY BACK FROM MY LOCAL RITE AID”. I have no problem with this. I like wearing a city as much as I like exploring one.

I’m having a very, very fun trip. I’ve been blessed with excellent timing on all counts: the weather is perfect, Labor [sic] Day weekend meant that I had the city to myself all morning and had street party after street party to jump between all evening, and my days are becoming more mundane just as everyone else goes back to work. I couldn’t possibly have asked for a better time to come.

I’m staying at the Jane Hotel and Ballroom in the West Village. It’s a stately old building that overlooks the Hudson River, and it’s still in mid-transition from a flophouse to an uber-hip destination, meaning there are as many long-term residents still as there are deal-seeking travellers in their twenties. Someone in marketing would refer to this as character. I refer to it as exactly what I was looking for. It’s a charming, spotless, tiny, air-conditioned room that is perfect for me, but I’m not entirely sure how the couples that I’ve seen wandering about are faring. It’s that small.

This is the Jane:

On the other hand, the survivors of the Titanic were offered refuge here in 1914, which is awesome. I can even see the pier where the Carpathia finally landed with everyone on board as I type this. I love that even fairly unremarkable buildings in this city have so much history.

Another thing: the hotel’s bar, the Jane Ballroom, or just the Jane, as in — “Hey, Ari! Where are you and Julia going for cocktails?” “Oh, we’re heading to the Jane now!” — is currently enjoying its 15 seconds of fame amongst the Manhattan hip set. I can’t quite tell if this is part of the aforementioned good timing or not, but it’s been enjoyable to sit amidst this unceasing maelstrom of cool with my scotch and my laptop and have a string of increasingly drunken ladies tell me their life stories. Really beautiful ballroom, though: very dark, and plush, and Victorian, though I still haven’t seen Zach Braff.

Thus, my environs! I’ll post more about my actual activities over the past few days, but for now it’s back to finding that laundromat.