#58. Brooklyn (Saturday, June 22, 2019)

What was your best day…of having every stop on a trip go according to plan?

In my work as an economist, back in the pre-2020 days I typically got to travel to about one or two conferences a year. And every time I went on one of those trips, I made it a rule to take full advantage – extend my stay by several days and make a vacation out of it.

This time I was in New York, at the Capital Markets Conference hosted by Goldman Sachs¹. The Friday after the conference ended, I spent the afternoon visiting the top of the One World Trade Center, dropping in on some colleagues at the Canadian Consulate in Midtown, and making my rounds in Central Park, before boarding the J-Train to Williamsburg, Brooklyn where the next step of my adventure awaited.

First I had to check into my Airbnb², a process which took thirty minutes longer than it should have because I didn’t realize I was supposed to enter through the tiny apartment gate on the side. Once that was settled, I ran twelve blocks to the Nitehawk Cinema³, climbing through a small door into a cozy theater just in time to catch the trailer for Steel Magnolias (1989) leading into Booksmart (2019) and order a buffet of a dinner using the paper pads from the side of my seat. Coolest, movie, atmosphere, ever.

Once that ended, it was time to go clubbing. Having already staked out all the locations beforehand, I had the path up to Greenpoint all ready – passing by three different spots, in case of a dud. But the first place, Good Room, was a hit. Tripadvisor described it as “unassuming”, but it was far bigger and far livelier than any of the clubs back home. And as I entered, the loud music and general uninhibitedness just invoked an excitement in me that I knew I could get nowhere else. I drank and danced all the way until three past midnight.

I wake up at one the next afternoon, and take the train down to Coney Island. Being the first Saturday of the year with nice weather, the crowds are absolutely massive. Plus, there’s this mermaid parade going on today, so I watch for an hour as people in every imaginable form of aquatic dress-up do their march along Surf Avenue.

I spend just eight hours at Coney Island, but the whole thing has this surrealness that makes it feel like I spent two full days there. I wait in the long line for Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, I eat my three hot dogs, I walk every corner of the boardwalk and crowd-watch, I ride the Cyclone, I ride the Thunderbolt⁴, I nap on a bench watching the sun set, I wait in line at Nathan’s for more hot dogs, I sit on the beach staring out into the ocean in the darkness as I eat those hot dogs.

But my day is not done yet. I’d found another spot, Elsewhere, up in East Williamsburg, that’s got a multi-spaced club with a roof terrace. So I take three trains to get there. And the place is huge. I hop from the entrance room bar, to the terrace, to each different floor, to the main warehouse where Penguin Prison is spinning his remixes to loud flashing strobe lights. And as I feel all this, dancing in the middle of the floor, draining my beers, I think to myself: isn’t this just the greatest thing ever.

Clubbing, by myself, in New York City.

Where Michael Bloomberg was the keynote speaker. Between the usual storytelling about how he had built up his company and pontificating about the current financial climate, there was a twenty-minute rant on the oddly specific topic of disruptive students in classrooms.
For my first time ever.
A committed old-school dine-in cinema. The whole eating-a-full-served-meal-while-watching-a-film-on-the-big-screen concept was strangely alluring to me – and something I had naively thought was unique to this place.
And almost die on it, because the operator gets interrupted in the middle of putting down my safety harness, then notices half a second before the ride takes off.