New York Is A Fantasy With Consequences

Tourist checklist from my recent trip to New York City:

a) See the Empire State Building and realize that without King Kong dangling from the top it's just an oversized Leggo tower with a lot of windows - check
b) Cruise through a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn and feel somewhat self-conscious driving my VW - check
c) See a rat in the subway - check
d) Go to MOMA - check
e) While at MOMA see Jackson Pollock's #1, 1948 and Dali's The Persistence of Memory - double check
f) Find the most beautiful woman in the United States - check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check
g) Spend too much money on things I didn't want or need - check
h) Get disgusted by Time Square (My assessment: "It's like walking into a magazine. A magazine with too many ads. And then you get papercuts all over yourself because you were dumb enough to walk into a magazine.") - check
i) Try and get directions from somebody who doesn't speak a lick English but won't/can't tell you they don't speak a lick of English and just stares at you blankly, occasionally saying "no" even though you asked an open-ended question like, "Which way is north?" - check
j) Go to Chinatown (My assessment: "It doesn't look anything at all like it did in Gremlins") - check
k) Feel claustrophobic at least once - check
l) Be out of doors and not be able to see the sky despite numerous attempts at neck craning - check
m) Walk through Chelsea and feel like I was eye candy for a gay man - check
n) Wonder why I just spent $16 plus tip on two rail whiskeys instead of buying an entire bottle - check
o) Realize why no one drives in NYC (My assessment: The roads have more waves than the Gulf of Mexico + the worry: "Oh shit. Shouldn't have turned here. Great, now I'm going to get carjacked.") - check
p) Pat my ass 100 times a day to make sure my wallet was still there - check
q) Be happy not to be surrounded entirely by conservative, white-bread, corn-fed albino Pennsylvanians with unreserved vocal disgust for Muslims and Mexicans - check
r) Realize that NYC has as many stray cats as Morocco - check
s) Realize that the I couldn't live in NYC not only because it's too expensive, but also because I would have to spend too much time with my therapist - check

Itinerary for next time:
a) Have a conversation with one of the mole people who live in the subways and ask them how they were affected by the transit strike
b) Go to Central Park
c) Get robbed and/or stabbed and left for dead
d) Share an espresso with a Mafioso
e) Go to Coney Island and play skeeball
f) Badmouth "Beantown" with a stranger on the subway