New York

The Charity: Road Runners Youth Programs

The Girl: Stacy Tse

Road Runners Youth Programs helps students in NYC (and globally) start running programs with multiple positive goals in mind. They hope to encourage healthy behavior, positive self image, and give students something to do after school.

Top Five things to do in New York:

Five: Rockefeller Center

Four: Check out the Empire State Building

Three: Visit Times Square (People watch)

Two: Visit any of the Museums (MFA, MoMa, MNH)

One: Take a stroll through Central Park, during daylight hours

Things I passed on: Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty (Whatever NJ, they belong to NYC as far as I’m concerned) and well, the place is called the BIG apple. There is a lot to do.

Good places to stay: with Robert Berliner

NYC’s Ratings. On a scale from 1 to Boston: 3

NYC has too many people, spoiled cabbies, too many cabbies, rude people, rip off artists galore, and just too much of everything (but if that’s your thing…)

NYC doesn’t have a definable culture/feel, a walkable city, or anything on Boston.

The story: Again, call me biased (Bostonian reviewing NYC), but New York is just too much. It is the eastern LA. Eastern does mean better, but still, that is like being the healthiest corpse in the morgue. Anyways, I did, despite my best efforts not too, have a good time. Mostly because I met up with Rob, Caroline, and Liz and we were reunited in a glorious good time. The museums are impressive and worthwhile, central park is huge and nice for a stroll, Times Square is a monstrosity of Americanism, and the city in general is just too much. Not a horrible place to visit, though not all everyone thinks it is- if you’ve seen one generic huge international city, you’ve seen NYC. A particular problem I have with the city (besides for the sports teams) is that the cabbies are spoiled rotten, and kind of dicks. I suppose they are fairly reasonably priced considering how overpriced everything else is, but honestly perhaps a good microcosm for the city as a whole.