In all seriousness, Manhattan keeps disappinting me. It is SO not the place i saw in my head when i pictured New York City growing up. It's all tourists and chain stores and pretentious fucks with way too much money. I loved that surprise overnighter J and i had in Queens, i loved my weekend in Brooklyn, and this time around i'm laying over in The Bronx, which i hope to love just as much. I booked the hotel for a song due to it just opening this month and needing to attract customers to a neighborhood that has a reputation for being a ghetto. In truth, although driving here from La Guardia took me past a bunch of bodega thugs, really it's just a Latino neighborhood with a few sketchy blocks further out from the subway - not much different from where i was staying in Monterrey. Admittedly the hotel does stick out like a sore thumb - it's one of the nicest i've ever stayed at, albeit for a fraction of the price - but meh. I don't feel unsafe on the main street, at all. Enjoying my last two nights in a cheap king before the austere pragmatism of Germany...
My layover in Dallas was surprisingly entertaining. Originally i was going to go into the city, but when i arrived there last week and realized how far it was from the airport, i decided on an airport motel instead. Of course, still being in the Mexican frame of mind, i decided to take a walk in my sandals to see if there was anything on the other side of the freeway. After about a mile i hit cute little downtown Grapevine, which is full of tacky Texas shit and wine bars. I ended up at - don't you know it - another biker bar. What can i say? You can smoke inside, they serve no-nonsense American grub and they have cheap beer. Since i had no car this time, i drank way too much and monopolized the jukebox for an hour or two. Waking up this morning at 5am sucked, a lot. Which may have influenced today's crankiness. Whatever. Tomorrow i'm only going into town to see a Broadway show and then i am either getting the fuck out, or visiting Central Park, which remains awesome despite its surrounds. Plus dinner and maybe drinks with
theda_b, which was kinda the whole point of the exercise, so yay! 