[Click here for Part 1 | Click here for Part 2]
You know what’s cooler than standing on top of the Empire State Building? Standing on top of another building that affords you a great view of the Empire State Building. Thus, we opted for …
Step Seven (continued): … the Top of the Rock. Not only is the view spectacular (as shown above), but, in keeping with the guiding principles of
The Official Daddy Scratches Guide to Family Fun in New York City … for Broke-Ass People!™,
tickets to the Top of the Rock for a family of four total anywhere from $6 to $176 less than those for the Empire State Building (depending on which of the four Empire State Building ticketing options you choose) … which means we’re well on our way to making up for those $10 bowls of ice cream!
If he can make it here, he can make it anywhere.
NYC Travel Tip: Did you bring an umbrella or extra layer that you no longer feel like lugging around? No problem! Just stow those unwanted items in the enormous bags underneath my eyes!
“But Jon, what if my kids get bored while standing on the roof of an enormous skyscraper with a spectacular view of the greatest city in the world?” Hey, listen: Today’s kids need constant stimulation … which is why the Top of the Rock observatory also features a room whose walls and ceiling are comprised of motion-sensitive banks of multi-colored lights! And you know what that means, right? NYC Dance Party! Hell yeah, y’all!
♪♫ Oppan Gangnam Style ♬♪
OK, now that we’ve gotten that out of our system, it’s time for …
Step Eight: Remember that Christmas tree I mentioned? It’s at the foot of Rockefeller Center, the building that houses the Top of the Rock. If you time things right (which we did), you can watch darkness fall on the city, see the buildings light up, and then check out the tree when you come back down to street level.
Behold!
The bad news:
Ice skating at Rockefeller Plaza does not fit into the Daddy Scratches’ Official Guide to Family Fun in New York City … for Broke-Ass People™ budget plan.
The good news:
The wait would have been insufferably long.
Plus, also: Ice skating? Meh.
Look! Bonus trees! Free of charge!
What the pictures above fail to capture is the unbelievable crowd crush in which one finds oneself when one visits Rockefeller Plaza on the first Sunday in December … which also is the first Sunday of the year to follow the annual Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony. The last time I was in a group this large and this tightly packed was during Woodstock ’94. (We will not pause here long enough to do any math that might make us realize how long ago that was and, therefore, how terrifyingly old we have grown.)
And because I promised to wrap things up in this entry, let us move swiftly through the remaining steps of our adventure, shall we?
Step Nine: Get the hell out of Rockefeller Plaza.
Step Ten: Grab a couple slices of pizza at some nasty-looking pizza joint because your exhausted-and-on-the-verge-of-a-meltdown youngest child has refused to eat at the several other places you’ve suggested, and this is not a battle you deem worthy of either your time or energy. (Translation: Let’s not screw up an otherwise delightful day, OK?)
Step Eleven: Decide to pretend you’re one of those people who can afford to take a cab.
Step Twelve: Abandon all hope, ye who attempt to hail a cab in Times Square during a prime theater-going hour on the first Sunday in December.
Step Thirteen: Stare death in the face a second time as you return to lower Manhattan via the subway. (Bonus points if, instead of taking an express train, you take the local, thereby increasing both the duration of your ride and the likelihood that disaster will strike.)
Step Fourteen: Board the ferry and head back to the mainland.
Though the fog has lifted, my complete inability to take an in-focus, long-distance, nighttime shot through a plate-glass window on a swift-moving ferry remains.
Consolation prize: A clear shot of my little lady with her
little Lady Liberty.
And thus concludes our Big Apple adventure, my friends. I hope you enjoyed yourselves. I know I sure did. In fact, all my smart-ass remarks aside, I can honestly say that this was one of the most fun and special days my family has ever had. As someone who didn’t see New York City until I was 25, and who subsequently fell in love with the place, it was an incredible experience to take my children for their first visit at ages 7 and 9.
The best part? They fell in love with it too … which guarantees that our first family adventure in NYC most definitely won’t be our last.
Burger King spiked my co-worker’s fries with a mind-altering substance
That is the only logical explanation for what I am about to tell you.
It all started with a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.
We ran out of sliced turkey … and being the financially sensible (read: broke) person that I am, I decided that, rather than eat out, I would bring to work a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.
Lunchtime arrived. I was weak. Faint. Famished. I ate the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. It was, shall we say, less than satisfying.
I was fucking starving. To death, even. Death was imminent.
My co-worker, meanwhile, opted for Burger King … a place from which I had not eaten a single morsel in more than 10 years.
It was 2002 when last I visited the kingdom of burgers. During a pit stop at a rest area in New Jersey, delirious from hunger, I somehow succumbed to the vile call of a bacon double cheeseburger, fries and a chocolate shake. Halfway through that psychotic episode, my hunger-suppressed ability to feel revulsion finally kicked in and I tossed the remainder of my “meal” in the trash while simultaneously using the Jedi mind trick on my wife.
“You shall tell no one what you just saw.”
“I shall tell no one what I just saw.”
“This is not the meal I was looking for.”
“This is not the meal you were looking for.”
And so, aside from that one regrettable episode, I have been fast-food-burger-joint-free for roughly two decades.
Which is why I’m convinced that what happened the other day had to involve my unwitting consumption of a hallucinogenic drug.
It must have been on the fries. They smelled so good … and amplified to an unimaginable degree the inadequacy of the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich that was taking up an infinitesimally small part of my still-growling stomach.
Then it happened. My friend offered me a fry. I ate it … and lost my fucking mind.
The rest is a blur. Someone — surely not me — took my car through the Burger King drive-through. I saw a hand reaching out to pay the headset-wearing merchant of death. It looked like my hand. But it couldn’t be … because that same hand was then holding a bag containing Burger King “food.” What madness is this??
Before I knew it, the contents of that bag had found their way into my stomach, and I spent the rest of the day burping and hiccuping and half hoping that the whole fucking mess would come gushing back out of my mouth like a disgusting geyser of fat and grease and “beef” and space-age preservatives that could keep an uneaten Burger King burger in mint condition until long after the sun burns out.
So I’m looking forward to never eating there again.
P.S.: This is why monarchies are bad, people.