Okay New York Checklist
My parents and sister visited this past weekend. Despite some rainy weather, everything turned out great. Even though they have visited me several times before, and together we've covered most of the tourist destinations, it seems like you can never run out of new things to do in this city. With that in mind, I've sketched up a New York checklist of things I'd like to do in the near future. Now you won't find any la-tee-da fancypants stuff on here like "attend a trendy independent underground art exhibit opening party in Williamsburg" or "eat almond-encrusted lobster tails on the 68th floor of the Trump Tower," but hopefully I'll look back on this in a couple of years and be able to move most of the "pending" stuff to the "completed" section. Here we go.
Completed:
★ Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge
★ Visit the top of the Emipre State Building
★ See a Yankees game at Yankee Stadium
★ See a Mets game at Shea Stadium
★ Yell "Hey watch it, I'm walking here!" to a cab (currently completed 37+ times)
★ Visit the World Trade Center site
★ Attend a taping of Late Night with Conan O'Brien
★ Meet Rupert G at the Hello Deli
★ Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art
★ Throw something off the balcony at a rooftop party
★ See a Broadway play
★ See an off-Broadway play
★ Visit the Nintendo World store
★ Visit St. Patrick's Cathedral
★ Sleep on a friend's couch for two months while looking for an apartment
★ Ride the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island
★ Eat a Nathan's hot dog at Coney Island
★ Teach summer school in the Bronx
★ Have a friend get cited for public urination in the subway
★ Smuggle Rice Krispie Treats out of Bloomberg
★ Go to an overhyped club that requires a password to enter
★ Walk inside the Statue of Liberty
★ Visit Ellis Island
★ Ride a completely vacant subway car
★ Take a bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal (and live to tell about it)
★ Have a burger and shake from the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park
Pending:
★ Ride the Ferris Wheel at Toys R Us Times Square
★ Skate in the ice rink at Rockefeller Plaza
★ Watch the Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Plaza
★ Watch the ball drop live on New Year's Eve
★ Run around the Jackie Kennedy Onassis Resevoir in Central Park
★ Take a photo/movie of a cardinal in Central Park
★ Visit MoMA
★ Visit the Brooklyn Museum of Art
★ Visit the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens
★ Visit the Guggenheim
★ Find my 6th grade friend Robert DelliBovi
★ Invite friends over for dinner, and cook something that actually tastes halfway decent and doesn't use the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Free Cooking Machine
★ Return to the Jolly Tinker and do Irish Car Bombs with Kurt, Nick, Tammer and Mike
★ Have a samurai reunion with Andrew, Jeff, Don and Eugene, play Frisbee Golf (or Tron) in Central Park
★ Meet the other NYC guys from theroot42
★ Try every flavor of ice cream at Uncle Louie G's on Union Street in Park Slope
★ Snap a photo with me and a subway rat in the same frame
★ Buy a bootleg DVD in Chinatown
★ Do the cool whisper-against-the-walls thing at Grand Central Station
★ Try out at a stand-up comedy club
★ Take a picture with a penguin at the Bronx Zoo
★ Take a digital camera movie of at least one celebrity sighting
★ Play Straight Up on acoustic guitar in a subway station
★ Eat frog legs at La Grenouille
Monday, June 26 at 6:07 PM
Shoot NYC
Little Italy
Shea Stadium
Park Slope Fireplace Mantle
Wednesday, June 21 at 9:17 PM
Korea
One of the most meaningful things that I learned from the okaydave experience was how small the world really is. That picture above is a visual representation taken from Google Analytics of the top 500 places worldwide where people have visited the site (the larger dots indicate the greatest concentration of visitors). Hyderabad, India? 438 peeps. Insane. The large circle over Korea was really interesting, especially since my Korean friend Jinsoo swore to me that he only visited the site twice (the second time was probably a mistake while trying to reach okayplayer.com). And not surprisingly, all of those visits are from South Korea.
Ever since seeing those stats and reading recent headlines, I've been interested in learning more about North Korea. The Indiana Jones and James Bond in me is fascinated that such an isolated and secretive place is still out there in the world. Some of the images people have captured on hidden cameras are simultaneously amazing and haunting. Barbed wire fences on the shoreline. Starving children being ignored by adults with food. Empty blocks of apartments that look like ghost cities. It seems like everything belongs in a post-apocolyptic video game and calls for a V for Vendetta-style government overthrow. Anyway, I thought the photos and stories were interesting enough to share.
★ Photographs from North Korea
★ Discovery Channel Look at North Korea (Video, 45 min)
★ Children of the Secret State (Video, 45 min)
★ Shinhwa in North Korea (Video, 3 min)
Monday, June 19 at 9:27 PM
Scooped in a Coupe, Snoop We Got the News
The move to Park Slope is complete...I finally don't feel like a visitor, sleeping on a couch and living out of a couple of suitcases. The new place and surrounding neighborhood are really great; I've been unpacking and exploring the area for most of the weekend. Prospect Park is especially beautiful, Hunan Delight and Louie G's Ice Cream are right around the corner, and familiar stores like Target and Guitar Center are within walking distance at the nearby Atlantic Terminal. Now that I'm settled in after a long hiatus, two new movies are on the way in the next couple of months or so. One will be a new installment in the I'm Walking Here series, giving a sense of what's been going on up here now as a permanent resident (if anyone wants to make a cameo appearance, let's hang out in the next couple of weeks). The other is a special video article for theFWA, which will have a DVD-esque behind-the-scenes look at how okaydave.com was created. Stay tuned...
Saturday, June 10 at 8:01 PM
Frog NYC
Thanks to Matt Ipcar for the great photos.
Friday, June 2 at 3:00 PM
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