NYC Continued...

On the fourth we woke up, ate lunch and set out to once again find my cousin's friend. This time he was in central park-and we wandered around for an hour or more before we found him. Then we went to the Great Lawn and laid out for most of the day. The only exciting thing that happened here was being mistaken for someone's friend Rachel and having a group of men try to talk to me as I was walking around alone. We left the park in the afternoon and walked down Broadway to times square to meet my cousin's friend's mother. She was cute little woman who decided to have us search for her (must run in the family)-she was standing near Elmo-a small person in an Elmo costume. After we met here, we went to the river (west side) and realized that the cute vendors who were there in the morning had left and now people were already camping out for fireworks. We quickly left that area and went in search of food-no one wanted to be the one to suggest a place-but my cousin's friend finally decided we were going to have pizza. We went to this place (don't know the name) and consumed chicken parmigiana pizza. We left her friend and his mother and headed back to her place. We met here already drunk friend and decided to go to Trader Joe's for some 3 buck chuck. Trader Joe's is down near 14th st, so we hopped on the subway and found out that Trader Joe's closed early on the 4th. Slightly disappointed, we went to her roof and waited for the fireworks.

After the fireworks ended-I was very glad to be on a rooftop. The masses of people leaving the river area was ridiculous. I was also very glad to not be in the subway at that moment either. Three blocks worth of people were pushing their way down into the hot, putrid depths of nyc's dirty subway system.

Soon enough I found out I would be joining their ranks. My cousin's Brooklyn friends wanted to go out in Brooklyn and wanted to leave right then. We got on the subway and I found out how the subway must be in rush hour. Crowded, unpleasantly warm, and sweaty. Once in Brooklyn I was happy to be out in the slightly cold air. We went to some bar with a cute little back deck area (which I found out are very popular in Brooklyn). Drank and watched people play ping pong while trying to guess the accents of the group of people beside us. Apparently my cousin's friend won-the people were Polish. One thing about this area of Brooklyn-known as Williamsburg-it full of hipsters. Picture guys with longish hair. Thick rimmed black glasses. Bright colored tight shirts or plaid button ups and tight skinny jeans or jords (sp?) cut-off jean shorts. Not really the kind of guy I'm attracted to-not that it really mattered I was there one week and staying in a place where only girls could go upstairs and sleeping on a cot in a room so narrow that my cot had to be beside the actual twin bed, creating one large bed. My cousin's friend was actually a lot of fun and we all went to another bar that had free cheese puffs and cozies for canned beer. I opted for a bit more expensive bottled beer and watched my cousin's friend take a "vodka cranberry goggles" picture with a hipster. She only drinks vodka cranberries and claims that she gets those goggles instead of beer goggles and now takes pictures with people whose glasses she wears in the picture. Interesting...anyway, this girl proved to be incredibly social and I loved it. I acted almost as a wing woman and chatted up these Spaniards with her (not my type they looked about 12, but claimed to be 23 yr old med students). Then while waiting for the bathroom-the man she had taken a vodka cran pic with came up and started talking to me. Long blond-haired and wearing thick rimmed black glasses-no thanks. I used the bathroom and dodged him on my way out. Luckily I could escape b/c we had to take my cousin's friend home b/c she had had a few too many vodka crans and was stumbling down the street listening to "Billie jean is not my girl" over and over again. We put her to bed and headed to the subway.

Problem-the subway was broken-the next train leaving Brooklyn would be there in 45 min.-not good. We left hailed a cab to take us to the first subway stop in Manhattan-this cost about 10 dollars with tip. Then we took the subway and headed back to her place. At one point we were on the opposite side of the street of some guys who were fighting-it was only a yelling match-no physical contact. My cousin then started to go on about how we shouldn't be on the street alone. She was scared and I wasn't. I never felt scared for one minute in NYC. I don't know if that's good or bad. Maybe I don't have a good concept of what I should be afraid of.