Troper Updates II, Part II

Things feel so different, yet so very much the same.

Good to see this place remains a reliable constant in my life. Greetings to all you lads.

I just got back from visiting my twin bro and his husband!

They live near Newark, NJ, so I got to go to Manhattan. It was one long I Think You Broke Her moment...everything was huge and crowded and weird and busy; I was hearing languages I didn't recognize, seeing things I'd never seen before, and I had NO idea where I was in relation to anything else. Just imagine me wandering around, wide-eyed, whispering a constant stream of WTFs.

We went to the Met. It was nuts. There was a line around the block to get in, because a new Michelangelo exhibit had recently opened. We didn't go to that; we spent most of our time wandering around the European art galleries like "Holy crap it's a Van Gogh. Holy crap it's a Rodin. Hoooooly crap it's a buttload of Bouguereau."

The next day was more mellow...coffee and shopping and Barcade (Exactly What It Says on the Tin!) in Jersey City.

I'm still discombobulated, in the good way.

edited 28th Nov '17 6:41:21 AM by RaspyMink

Aww you should have told me you were there! I could have given you the grand tour!

But I'm glad you got to go to the Met! I have to go there a lot for school projects, and I'm always like, "Ugh, I can't believe I have to drag myself all the way over to the Met today," then pay like ten cents for admission, and try to get in and out as quick as possible so I can get on with my life. But then once I'm there and see all the excited tourists from around the world and all the one-of-a-kind works I have the privilege to be able to see literally whenever I want I realize how ungrateful I am for thinking of it as this chore I have to get done instead appreciating it. I only work a few blocks away so I don't know why I'm not at the Met every day!

edited 28th Nov '17 8:09:43 AM by Cailleach

Raspy, your report of your adventures is making me want to visit NYC also! I live in NJ, so it wouldn't be too long of a trip. Maybe I could just wander around aimlessly, or visit Central Park.

Two days ago, my family visited my younger brother's new home in Pennsylvania, which looked like an interesting place to visit, with a surprisingly nice yet small park by his apartment. And the liberal town he lives in is an odd mismatch for his ultra right wing views (there's even a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker on a car near his). There was even a tiny war museum within walking distance of his apartment.

I should put up the photo album actually.

Edit: for now, before I possibly revoke access to the public, here's the album.

edited 28th Nov '17 10:16:35 AM by BonsaiForest

Someone come visit me!!

I'd be happy to!

I have 20 vacation days left for this year, and I could easily go whenever, except this Saturday (I babysit my niece and nephew then). But I would be very interested in visiting NYC and experiencing it firsthand.

If you'd like to make arrangements for a time to come visit, I could make that day my NYC trip day. It'd be a totally new experience for me me. I've visited rural and suburban areas before, but never explored an urban one before!

Have you never been to NYC before, or just never really explored it?

I've never been to New York City at all. My family has driven through Philadelphia, but I've never really been there. I went to college in a city also, but lived at home while I did so, and never explored the city (though we did visit some of its areas once in a blue moon).

So nope, never been there, not even to pass through, actually! (It was never along the way in the trips we took from New Jersey to other states, as we never went north of New Jersey.)

edited 28th Nov '17 2:36:46 PM by BonsaiForest

Really? I guess it's not that weird though, since I've never been to Philadelphia even though it's like right around the corner

edited 28th Nov '17 3:39:37 PM by Cailleach

Yeah. Driven through it, seen the same sights in it (including that one tall building with the lights on top that always spell out different messages in a marquee - I always liked the look of that when I was a kid), but never been in it to explore or anything. Just visited a few museums in Philly when I was a kid.

My online friend says that nothing is like New York City, and that one would have to go there to see if it's really for them or not. I imagine. I know it has its reputation and its oddities (see: the people who dress up as costumed characters to make money from people who take pictures with them, for instance), but I know nothing about it, and even if I did, it would likely not compare to actually being there.

I'm reading Raising Steam for the very first time since I purchased it.

At first I wasn't all that into it but something about the pages I read piqued my interest. I have sort of settled into the setting and the characters, I rather like it, I can't wait to read more.

The problem with only hearing about NYC from tourists is that you get the impression that it's wall to wall Times Square. But in reality if you avoid a single block out of hundreds in this massive city (a block that I barely ever need to cross through) you'll never see a single costumed character. Those kinds of things are just for tourists. The tourist part of the city and local part of the city rarely overlap

edited 28th Nov '17 5:19:11 PM by Cailleach

Yeah, I figured the regular people dressed up as costumed characters to make money from photo ops are there for tourists.

But just how much of the city is utterly unlike the famous, touristy parts... I'm gonna guess... any part that's not well-known?

My online friend who's visited many countries said that she prefers to see how regular people live, and not just look at the well-known tourist stuff. When I was a kid, I too thought tourism that only looked at the famous tourist spots was stupid, because it was so artificial.

I wonder if it's an Aspie thing. We Aspies tend to really hate artificiality and false fronts in so many ways, that this could be another.

90%, at least. First of all, the majority of the NYC population lives in the outer boroughs (Brooklyn's the most populated, followed by Queens), but since New York Is Only Manhattan, you barely ever hear about where most people actually live. I live in Queens, half an hour from Manhattan by subway. There is not a skyscraper in sight. I live in a three story apartment building, with one apartment per floor. There's not really much to do around here (unless you like authentic ethnic food! Then come on over!) A lot of Manhattan is pretty chill too (as long as it's not rush hour), though a bit more crowded.

It's really only Midtown and maybe Lower Manhattan you gotta worry about. The most crowded places by far are the tourist spots. (It's kind of funny when you think about it. Millions of tourists come to New York and choose to congregate on the same block, and then complain about how crowded New York is ) Not that I blame tourists for hitting a lot of the famous spots. I mean Times Square is quite a sight in person

And I'm the same way as your friend. I hate touristy junk. I feel embarrassed doing it. I can just feel the locals rolling their eyes at me. My family thinks I'm weird for doing it, but when I'm on vacation someplace far away my favorite thing to to just integrate into the local population and do what they do.

I think visiting the local population and getting to see the way they actually live is really the best way to experience another location, be it city, state or country. I mean, to visit France and be "omg, the Eiffel Tower is so great, look how lucky the people are to have this", would be missing the point of what regular people in France actually experience.

Do the people in NYC tend to visit the touristy areas from time to time, since they're there? I saw you say that the Met (I had to look up what "the Met" even is - the Metropolitan Museum of Art) is within a short distance from your area, and you see it as no big deal. I imagine to everyone, their usual is no big deal. Even my online friend visiting all those countries, which her family has been doing forever, she sees as not all that impressive, but she sees that people's minds are blown when they find out she visited ~20 countries. Her routine is other's OMG.

Likewise with the whole "local cuisine" thing. People in small islands eat seafood because... it's there. Others who visit are like "Wow, look how exotic the local food is!" Yeah, it's exotic, if by "exotic" you mean "different from what I'm used to".

If I visited NYC, I may want to visit a touristy place, but seeing the regular city would be very important. If you gave a tour, what would it likely include?

I'm the kind of person who would take out memberships in local museums if I had the time and money.

My younger brother found a neat war museum, a really small one hosted in the basement of some random building, when walking around his hometown. It was neat to visit. Had videos, a diorama, a few displays that recreated aspects of war (such as soldiers sitting in their bunk, reading letters), and lots of medals and things. Pretty professional, despite its small size. Staffed entirely by elderly war veterans. Cost very little to visit (or nothing at all; I forget), and they took donations.

The problem I've run into with the museums where I grew up is that I've either memorized the standing exhibits, or they've changed my favorite ones and they're Ruined Forever.

When the Indiana State Museum opened their current location, they had a futurism exhibit about what Indiana will be like in the 2020s. It was really fun to use the interactive consoles at the back to make choices about what directions to take the state, and the centerpiece of the exhibit was a small theater where you watch a video of the choices an Indiana family in the near future will have to make about how to run their lives and businesses, and the audience votes on what they should do for each question, then the video shows what happened to the family ten years after they made each of those choices. Problem was, I memorized the entire exhibit. And then they tore it out and turned that room into a gallery for rotating exhibits.

We do touristy stuff from time to time, yeah. I mean it's there, might as well do it. I go to the museums a lot (the American Museum of Natural History is the best place in the universe. I mean check out this dinosaur!), go to Broadway shows, and for our birthday last year my twin sister and I hit up a lot of the most touristy places in Times Square (The Disney store, the M&M store) for the hell of it. And sometimes you just end up in Times Square going from one place to another.

I'd have to think about where we'd go. It would depend on what kinds of things you like. I mean there are a lot of things to do here. I could do 10 things a day for 20 years and still have things left to do. It would be hard to figure out which ones to include when you only have a single day

Eyy, timestamps!

Eyyy! They won't let me edit for some reason, but make that x4

Sounds awesome. The Museum of Natural History is something I've heard mentioned many times, but never been there. Been to a museum in Philadelphia that's pretty big when I was a kid, but not the NYC Museum of Natural History. That interests me more than the art museum.

I'd let you pick the places to visit, because I really don't know what I'd like to see, other than Central Park perhaps. If it's loaded with things to do, then sure, pick some! For me, Central Park, maybe seeing Times Square in person, and The Museum of Natural History all sound like things I'd like to see. You could list some ideas perhaps as well?

And yeah, while the touristy stuff may stop being a big deal to people who live there, I figured people who lived in the area would check it out since it's there. :P I mean, why not?

My family would regularly go to the Children's Museum, the zoo, the state museum. Frequent family outings when we were kids. For several years, the Children's Museum was What We Do On Boxing Day and the State Museum was What We Do On New Year's Day, and we usually got out to the zoo at least once in the summer and once in the winter when they decorated with lights.

Your family was also the type of family that would vacation at the same places? Mine is. We have a vacation house in this really great mountainy, lakey area that looks fantastic. As a kid, while it looked nice, I didn't appreciate the natural beauty like I do now. We've visited some of the same locations there once every few years. I even tried to pass these traditions on, by doing things like suggesting we visit certain places with my niece/nephew/cousin's kid. He even thanked me for taking him to see this beautiful waterfall area.

Museum of Natural History is right next to Central Park, so that's two birds one stone (though admittedly, most of my favorite Central Park spots, like the Minton Tile Ceiling, are pretty far from there. Central Park really is quite large.), and Times Square isn't too too far from there either. After that, I'm still having trouble narrowing it down. What kinds of stuff do you want to do?

edited 28th Nov '17 7:47:02 PM by Cailleach