Saturday, May 16, 2009

Logistics


Live blogging this year's Surtex is going to present a challenge. What I'd normally do is walk over to 42nd Street to Starwich, a nice cafe with free wireless, cheap food, big comfy chairs, even electrical outlets, but this year: butcher paper in the windows. The Starbucks on the corner is also closed, as is the Crunch gym that was in the same building, not that I'd ever use the gym. The little deli under the Travel Inn is still there, but they have no wireless. This whole part of town has become blighted since last year.

This year it's cheap-ass Manhattan for me. I'm not using any of their #%&@ union cherry pickers or box handlers. After they move a couple boxes for you they send you a bill for $400. Then after you pay it, they find some way to send you another bill for $180. Last year I had them handle one box for me. They charged me for two, so I called to find out why. Two-box minimum. The customer service representatives are surly and take great pleasure at giving you a hard time. Not this year, mutherfuckers.

Carrie told me that mercury is in retrograde which means all sorts of shit is supposed to go haywire. The Air Train was out of service so I took a Super Shuttle from JFK. The way they deliver passengers in New York is funny. They start at the highest number streets and work their way down without variation. We stopped at 106th and Amsterdam, then shot over to 97th and East End, then 80th and Broadway, then 3rd Avenue. It was a crosstown nightmare, and of course I was dead last to be dropped at Javits. There are Italian sausage festivals happening on 6th and 9th Avenues today adding to the cabbie nightmare. Mercury retrograde!

So then I found a Dunkin Donuts on 10th Avenue across from a Shwarma Felafel place with a giant chicken Wonder Wheel in the window. I've eaten there. Dunkin claimed free wireless. Great, this year I'll gain ten pounds live-blogging, I thought, ordering a large cake-size donut. It was one of those complicated code deals to break into their internet service, and each code the cashier gave me failed. I gave up. I have a new hotel this year, since I was too late to book a room at my favorite Travel Inn, just up the street from the Sodium Light Palace. Looking forward to see what the internet access will cost me there. Ideally, I'd have a little internet cafe within a couple blocks of Javits I could run over to occasionally and scan and post my sketches. While I was sitting at the Dunkin trying to hack into the free wi-fi, the sky opened up and dropped a ton of rain, and me without an umbrella. But then just as quickly it stopped and I walked out without being hit by a drop.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Lloyd,
NYC is just FUN FUN FUN...ain't it? But really, Javits is at like 34th and 10th Ave, so you should walk on over to 32nd Street, near the intersection with 5th Ave, and on the south side of 32nd you'll find the greatest dumpling place, called Mandoo Bar. I take everybody there when I'm in NYC. You'll also get a huge kick out of all the other Korean joints on the 32nd St between B'Way and 5th. Food for cartoonist's brain, really! see: http://www.yelp.com/biz/mandoo-bar-new-york-2
Also, FYI, the Fashion Inst of Technology (tons of young illustrators...my brother Po is one of them) is at 27th St and 7th Ave. There are wifi cafes around there. I'll ask Po what's the good one.
--Lex
www.dbr.nu

11:17 AM  
Blogger Lloyd Dangle said...

Thanks for the tip Lex! Yeah, I love New York. I ate at a Korean place around there that had two floors with a giant waterfall and a white grand piano. Same place?

3:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Waterfall? Yikes! No, Mandoo bar is your typical cramped closet full of uber-trendy dumpling eaters. A handful of nicely crafted dumplings costs you, like $10. But at least you don't get a cauldron full of flame-thrower spicy soup, like all the other places in K-town. My brother Po said he doesn't leave the computer lab anymore, so he doesn't know what's the best wifi around there... anyway, the live toons are fun! -Lex

2:05 PM  

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