New York City: Day 1

It's 2:37 in the morning, and I should be in bed to pick up Jeff from La Guardia, but I need to get some thoughts on this amazing first day.

First, some observations about New York:

1) Even though this is a big city, it feels very intimate.

In Los Angeles, people are so segregated from each other due to a car culture that shelters people from the outside world, a weak transportation system, and neighborhoods that expand outward. However, in New York, everywhere you go seems to be packed with people, from the subway stations and the subway cars that are maybe only 10 feet wide, to the sidewalks, to the restaurants, everywhere. And it's not just one specific group of people, but people of all races and socioeconomic statuses. This place forces you to interact with people, which is incredibly refreshing from the isolation of LA. It was really trippy to be able to listen to conversations on the other side of subway cars, or beside me on the sidewalks. People seem to be much more willing to engage in conversation, ask questions about the city and each other, and overall people here are very friendly and helpful. Even the police, while I would still question their tactics, seem to interact much better with the populace here than anywhere else I've been. In the shadows of all it's skyscrapers, New York is a people-place, and you'd have a hard time isolating yourself from the environment here.

2) There is incredible diversity in Manhattan, and all of it is easily accessible.

I absolutely love the subway system. It just a few hours I was able to hit up Grand Central and Times Square (in the center of Manhattan), Chinatown and Little Italy (on the South Side), all from Spanish Harlem (in the Upper East Side). And each area has its own distinct and unique flavor. Times Square is your typical big city attraction with its neon lights and towering buildings trapping the gusts into the city streets. Chinatown is a little more low-key, although their streets are still littered with people. This place is filled with more one-story buildings, with souvenirs ranging from the generic knockoffs (like T-Shirts, purses, scarves, etc.) to the culturally unique (like weapons and antiques). Little Italy is just northeast of Chinatown, with mostly Zagat-rated restaurants, delis, cafes, and with some Chinese-run souvenir shops here and there. Tomorrow I plan to hit up Central Park, Greenwich Village, and the United Nations. All-in-all, Manhattan is a bustling place with little places for everyone. It took me several months to really begin to appreciate the nuances of Los Angeles (when I got to know people with cars), but it only took me a few hours to explore New York and discover it's many faces. And I know I'm only scratching the surface.

3) There's a reason why folks are more self-conscious in California than New York.

California is notorious about being extremely self-conscious and obsessed with looks (and no, the Bay Area is not excluded from this critique). Between all the Jamba Juices and Gold's Gyms across the state, the diet-a-season that takes us by storm, breast implants, liposuctions, facelifts, tummy tucks, Botox injections, and all the other freakish mutilations we put ourselves through, we Californians are obsessed with our looks.

And there's a reason: it's the amazing California weather. Sure, we may have a rainy week here and there, but for the most part, we are blessed with sunshine a strong majority of the year. However, with better weather comes more revealing attire. And thus, we Californians expose our bodies far longer than the rest of the nation. And we don't want some nasty body sticking out there, we want them beautiful and fine-tuned.

But in New York, it's a different story. When you actually have seasons, you get winter. And when you face winters at freezing temperatures (like today, when the low was 23 degrees), you're priority is staying warm. That means bundling up. And storing fat. So now you have a situation where: a) hardly anyone knows what your body looks like because you're covering every inch of it in layers of clothing, and b) you're gonna want some extra pounds here and there to keep your innards warm and toasty. And I wondered why the official New York food is the hot dog. (By the way, I broke my vegetarian diet as part of this New York experience and yeah, New York hot dogs are damn good).

4) It's easy to fall in love with New York City.

Maybe it's a honeymoon experience for me, but the intimacy, diversity, and accessibility of Manhattan have really opened my eyes about what New York is about. Really, the pictures and the television do not do this place justice. There is a charm here that you can't find in California, and probably nowhere in the world. Believe me, I'm not blind to the problems here, from the extreme weather to the homeless to the grind of being around so many people for a long time. But I can see how New Yorkers can be so passionate about this place.

I could see how the 9/11 attacks could have a whole different meaning in New York. Yeah, seeing the towers go down was hard on the entire nation, but in New York, these towers were far more intimate, and I don't write that just because they're in New York. For example, If someone destroyed the Transamerica building in San Francisco, I'd be shocked and saddened as many of us would, but chances are, I wouldn't have known anyone killed. But in New York, you interact with everyone. So to see the towers go down, if you were a New Yorker you probably did know someone who worked there, or one of the firefighters, or one of the police killed on 9/11. You might not have known their name, but you probably saw them on the subway, or passing by on the street.

In that sense, New York is one huge family. New Yorkers may not be pleasant to you or each other a lot of the time, but they share a bond with the city and each other that folks in other cities don't quite get. As far as getting decently big cities, I've been to Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Sacramento, San Diego, Las Vegas, Vancouver and Manila/Quezon City, and out of that list, the closest that comes to that New York feel is San Francisco. But even then, San Francisco is on a much smaller scale, and BART can only take you to few sections of the city before you're left to their crappy Muni system to get to the little nooks and crannies. New York is a special place, and you have to be here to see it for yourself.