“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.” ― John Updike

Today I actually ended up waking early again but not as early as usual. The weather was still brutal (how can anyone deal with 30+ humidity weather for this long??) outside.

I ate a little bit of breakfast, watched one episode of Scrubs and then headed out.

I went for a walk (as usual) but this time I went north instead of my usual South. I headed up all the way to 78th street and on my way there, I walked through a gigantic streetfair on Broadway and found the theatre where Stephen Colbert films (I need to go back and live there. I need to be near this.)!

It was quite a nice walk - would have been nicer if it was cooler but it was nice nonetheless.

I walked into a few food markets as well, where people were selling organic foods/goods and there were so many people out there buying stuff.

Chess tournament

It was my first time walking around Upper West side and, man, is it nice. It's a very residential looking area, but not like the East, since there were many indie cafes and small restaurants. 

People were out with families and dogs... It would probably be a nice place to raise a family. 

I walked over to the Grand Bazaar, where it was in the playground of a school yard and there were vendors selling antique items both in and outside of the school as well as indie food and drink places. It had a really cool garage sale feel.

Haagen Daaz was actually there, giving out and promoting their brand with free ice cream (I swear all they do when I see them is give out free ice cream).

After my nice visit, I walked back down Broadway to meet up with my visitor and down the street,
there were many more stalls and trucks that went up.

One actually caught my attention quite quickly... and I had to grab it. 

I found the Late Night Show!

It was the Economist and they were also giving out free ice cream (This would be my fourth free ice cream of the last 36 hours) ... and free bugs.

Yes, bugs. On top of the ice cream as toppings! They had crickets, meal worms and other bugs that they topped off with.

I could see that everyone in the line was very apprehensive and kind of disgusted... but I was super excited. 

Whereas I could see other people brushing off their toppings, I asked for some of everything.

Ice cream - Does it bug you?

It was quite cool, the Economist had actually ran a story about the perks of eating bugs and how healthy and high they are in protein and how low they are in carbs. They also emit a lot less CO2 than it takes to make cows. They're probably one of the next best snacks there is - that is, if people can get over themselves and eat it. 

Honestly, it tasted like crunchy corn puffs. There was no flavour and it isn't bad for your body.

I walked down all the way to Hell's kitchen and we headed over to Hell's Kitchen Flea market. It was kind of smaller than I thought it would initially be and I felt really bad for the vendors who had to stand outside in the heat to sell their items. At a few points, I touched the jewellery and metal and they were selling and it was on fire-burning hot. I couldn't imagine sitting there all day, even with the onnings up.

It was indeed a vintage flea market, there were items and things everywhere being sold - from old army medals to jewellery, to African inspired art work.

It was quite nice.

Afterwards, we decided that we needed a bit of a break from sightseeing and we went shopping. Yes. I went shopping. I wasn't huge on it, but because she had seen that there were sales all over the city, she wanted to check it out. We headed over to a few stores where I made some work purchases (stuff for work - and only got 3 things) and surprisingly, I got pretty much almost 80% off some stuff. literally. For sale items were dropped down to a low price and then some stores were doing 30-60% off the lowest sale price.

I asked a sales associate about it because I had not seen stuff be sold for 60% off the lowest price and

I love food.

she told me that around 4th of July, a lot of stuff starts going on sale as they have to get rid of that season's clothes to make room for next season's. They sell stuff for as low as possible around this time and the only other time they bring up the discount that high is around Christmas time!

Good timing for me, damn. 

After a long day of walking around for stuff, we headed over to Baohaus, a Taiwanese place that sold Taiwanese buns and homemade taro fries. 

It was pretty delicious. 

Afterwards, because we were still hungry and because I felt like every person who ever visited New York should eat at Shakeshack.

So we headed over to the one in Madison Square Park, which didn't have too long a line up and sat down. 

I got a normal burger and it was delicious. Their fries were crispy and their burger was soft and good.

Baohaus baos

As we sat down, I was told more information about the area. Such as this: The Flatiron building was one of the first original skyscrapers! It was built in classic art deco style with beautiful carvings on the outside of the building. It was built as a triangle instead of a square so people were really scared that it would blow over. Silly 20th century people.

The building with the clock tower on the east side of the Flatiron building used to be decorated just as beautifully as the Flatiron. But then it went through renovation and they stripped the building of all the carvings and decoration. It was a travesty. The clock was actually built to be based off the church clock towers in Italy. The building used to be offices but now it was a building used as a hotel. On the top floor, where the windows and the roof is, people rent it out (and it's ridiculously expensive).

The building beside it was meant to be about twice the size as it was today. Unfortunately, as they were building it up, halfway through the construction... the stockmarket crashed. And they had to stop building. Whoops.

I also found out a bit more about the Rockefellers! 

So (and I am paraphrasing so bear with me), the original Rockefellers founded what is now known today as standard oil. Around the time that they founded this, they were using this oil for gas lamps... but you know what else was becoming popular? The modern automotive... which ran on? That's right, GAS! 

The Rockefellers made it big. They had a great product and great timing to go along with it. 

JD Rockefeller Junior was even better. He was a huge capitalist but a great philanthropist at the same time. During the building of 30 Rock, the depression hit, and instead of pulling his money out like everyone else did, from what I heard, he single handedly provided almost 75,000 jobs - even though his family estate had lost HALF their wealth. Insane.

He helped fuel the economy again.

Afterwards, we headed home and went straight to bed.