Visit to New York City

Last weekend I journeyed to New York City for the 23rd annual SIOP convention. This was somewhat a big deal, since I hadn’t been to New York since I was like four, and a subsequent life’s worth of Dirty Harry and Curt Russle movies had convinced me that I would be pickpocketed, mugged, and ultimately eaten by homeless CHUDS within a few feet of the deboarding gate in La Guardia. This turned out to not be the case, and there was a surprisingly low number of attempts on my life during the whole trip.

Most of my time was spent in Time’s Square where the conference hotel was. The great thing about this location is that I was able to walk around with my camera stuck to my face without looking like a complete moron because every other person was doing the same thing. In fact, if you put your camera down for more than a couple of minutes, you could get a ticket. I was initially delighted with shooting all the flashy stuff at Time’s Square, but my glee diminished once I realized I was taking picture after picture of what were essentially advertisements. Sure, they’re forty foot high digital ads, but and ad for Maxell cassette tapes or a giant M&M candy is still an ad. I also would have killed for a wide angle lens with image stabalization for the night shots, but oh well.

I did manage to get away from Time’s Square some, though. Friday night I met my friend Chris and his girlfriend for dinner. When we hit the street he pointed in one direction and said “We’re headin’ that way.”

“Are there many CHUDS?” I asked, noting that the direction was into territory lacking in giant billboards and throngs of tourists packed together for protection like zebras in a herd.

It turned out that there were not many, and we had a nice dinner in an area called Hell’s Kitchen, which I always thought was where Daredevil or dancing gangsters from West Side Story hung out. Didn’t see either. The next night I hooked up with another friend, David, and went with a small group to dinner in Little Italy (which, much to my disappointment, did not contain midgets from Sicily). We took a jaunt through SoHo before taking the subway back to the hotel. That last was kind of interesting, since it was the first subway I’d ridden on where the conductor actually came on the speaker system and advised us to “BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS AND HOLD ON TO YOUR PURSES AND BAGS, PEOPLE.”

The most disappointing part of the trip was Saturday afternoon when I decided to set out on my own down 7th avenue in search of the B&H Photo New York Superstore. I like to buy my photography stuff through B&H’s website because of its great selection and pretty good prices, so their mythical New York Superstore had always fascinated me. As far as I could tell it was supposed to be the size of Connecticut and crammed full of all kinds of photogeekery. So I trekked the 14 or so blocks from the hotel, fighting my way through crowds and navigating by the sun and the occasional street sign. When I finally got there I found out the damn thing was closed on Saturdays. As Yoda would say, TFW? Who is closed on Saturday?

So instead I walked another bunch of blocks over to the Empire State Building, figuring I could zip up to the observation deck. Only it turns out that Saturday afternoon is hardly the ideal time to do this, as the wait was over two hours long. So I turned around and trudged back to the hotel, but as it turns out David and I had time before my flight out on Sunday morning to go to the GE Building in Rockefeller Center, where I took a picture OF the Empire State Building instead of FROM it.

Overall, very fun trip. I just wish I had more time to go look around and visit other parts of the city like the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, and the site of the World Trade Center. But I had to squeeze the actual conference in there, too. And dodging those CHUDs was time consuming.