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Tetris (arcade) (1988)

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StockPlunge

NewYorkCity

Manhattan

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Barcade

@Barcade

BriceDailyPhoto

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Will Cuylle at Barcade in Chelsea.

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Barcade days

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Barcade was bitchin’.

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Barcade is now on Untappd! View our live updated beer menus, sign up for notifications for menu changes, and collect special Barcade badges at EACH of our locations when you check-in a beer!! Collect all 9 if you can!!!

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Last night . . . . #barcade #philly #fishtown #sketch #skecthbook #arcade #doodle #illustration #ink #doodle #bar

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Rediscovering New York

Quite a while back now we grabbed tickets to see John Oliver and Seth Meyers live in New York at the Beacon Theater. Back on March 9th we made that trip and it was our first time in New York City proper since 2015. 🤯 For this particular trip Kristen and I, because it had been so long, kind of wanted to rediscover things and get our bearings on our own terms. It's fair to say though that it won't take us almost another almost entire decade to make it back. Though it pains the 'Boston is better rivalry' part of my soul to fully admit it was a fun adventure and there's a lot to explore we left planning our next trip.

At least some of my mind-shift on New York is based on the fact that in a lot of the best ways it feels kind of like another country. We took the train there, there's a bustling transit network, a unique culture, lots of dining and pubs, world class cuisine (mmm bagels LOL), and a seemingly endless amount of entertainment, landmarks, museums, etc. to explore. Our trip started by hopping on the Amtrak Acela and heading down the Northeast Corridor for a quick 3 and a half hour trip, perhaps the most Europe equivalent train journey you can make in the United States. You'd be unlikely to drive it in that time with typical traffic and if you did you'd of course miss out on "train beers." 😉 As a transit nerd aside one nice thing about the BOS-NYC section of the Northeast Corridor is it has some of the fastest sections of track on the whole corridor (except you Connecticut come on get with the program!). We emerged into the new 'Moynihan Train Hall' Amtrak's primary station in New York City (more on that later) and made our way to the cab stand for a short ride to our hotel in Chelsea.

We had more extensive plans from Saturday evening but by the time we made it to our hotel room and got settled the rain had started teeming down and we didn't really have the appetite for traipsing across the city. So we made our way to the 'Barcade' located a few doors down from our hotel. Apparently these are a chain across at least the NYC are and they're a lot like what they sound like. Overall the beer selection was good with a bunch of craft beer options on draught and the selections of games was fairly solid as well. There were classics like Frogger, Galaga, Ms. Pacman to pretty wild things like Sega Time Travler, Tron DISCs, and a Trivial Pursuit in arcade cabinet form. For me the highlights were a version of Tapper with the proper Budweiser branding both on the cabinet and in game as well as the Asteroids & Lunar Lander with the proper vector displays. To me the most unique thing I saw was an Apollo 13 pinball game which was very well themed and instead of having the standard pull to shoot the ball it had a replica of the Apollo Command Module abort handle that you had to twist to launch the ball, very unique. Overall we had fun imbibing, vibing, enjoying some above average nachos, and alternating between our favorite games. All in all a pretty solid date night we'd have to work harder than walking a few doors down to achieve at home. I certainly forget at times the convenience of city level density, not that it doesn't come with its inconveniences to.

Sunday morning we headed uptown and stopped for what else? BAGELS! I got in the epic line to order and it took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at in the display cooler...cream cheese like I've never seen it. Mountains of it in flavors I wouldn't have dared to imagine. Pretty wild honestly. 🤯 I placed our order and took a seat at the table Kristen had found. After a few minutes a guy came over not sure if he was the owner, manager, or just MC it is apparently a thing most legit bagel places in Manhattan have someone out on the floor to kind of keep order, mingle with tourists like us, direct traffic, add some local flavor to the experience, etc. He asked where we were from and told us an amusing story about a family that had been down from Massachusetts not long ago and were very hesitant to reveal their origin. LOL. He was like "Hey own it!" Absolutely. Honestly I've never had a hostile reaction to being in NY and from the Boston area. Maybe some good natured ribbing but I'll be the first to admit there ain't much of a Sox/Yankees rivalry these days and that's in favor of the Yankees with the Red Sox lagging the last several seasons.

After some delicious bagels, no one does it better than NY, we headed over to the Museum of Art and Design for an exhibit they've been running on Taylor Swift's various concert attire, outfits, fashion, artifacts. The collection was donated and curated by Swift herself. It's always interesting to see the genuine article for stuff like that. After the museum we headed back downtown to our hotel and as Kristen had some work to finish up I went the next block over to Smithfield Hall which is a soccer pub in NY and often home to Manchester United fans in NY area. Sadly United weren't playing but I caught the tail end of the Liverpool/City game and had a beer so I could say I did.

By this point it was time to head to dinner. I'd picked a place I thought looked good and we hopped a cab. Unfortunately when we got there it was apparently trivia night and there were no tables. My suburban proclivities were caught of guard by the concept of a trivia night on a Sunday but hey who am I to judge the customs of another culture? Since the place happened to have a Cask Ale on I had one before we headed up the street to a different pub and were seated quickly without issue. I had a solid steak sandwich and ended up partaking in another unusual custom of this different culture something known as "happy hour?" Apparently the custom involves drinks being discounted, sometimes heavily, to draw in patrons at times when business might otherwise be slow. Truly this is a foreign custom! (Aside: I kid but for those not in the know Massachusetts has outlawed happy hour since the 1970s. There was an accident involving an attractive young woman being tragically killed in a drunk driving incident and people had had enough. It is not, as commonly thought, a Puritan thing but it does fit with that narrative. There have been some efforts to revive it but change around anything alcohol related takes time lots of time here in Massachusetts.)

Time for the main event, or at least rationale for this trip in the first place, some stand-up courtesy of John Oliver and Seth Meyers. I don’t think they need any introduction. John Oliver was up first and his set was more or less in the lane I would have expected. What I was most impressed by though is the absolute effortlessness and lightness he proceeded through his set with it. It was impressive and not unexpected but fun to see from a master practitioner of the art. Seth was up next and had a great set as well. His material was more centered on family and parenting vs. the well trodden path of ‘Closer-Look’ segments. Still a very funny set and fun to witness. Afterwards the two teamed up for a Q&A that was definitely worth staying for despite their insistence that all were free to leave and probably should (😂). Perhaps the best review/summation of the evening was Kristen who said as we were leaving “I’m pretty sure I just laughed for two hours straight.” I don’t disagree.

So here’s the thing reader... As travelers we aren’t great at the ‘last day’ of a trip. Monday morning we headed of for some bagels (obvi) and the made our way down to checkout some shopping in the area of the hotel. Sadly one of the places we were hoping to check-in on was the LEGO store and it wasn’t open. Also unfortunate the iconic Flat Iron building is currently covered in scaffolding. Which is a theme I thought about a few times over the course of the trip was how much work it is to maintain the iconic landmark buildings in and among all the new construction. Personally I’m glad the effort is made because there’s nothing I love more than some 1930s Art Deco architecture. The LEED certified glass monstrosities that Boston seems to throw up if it gets the chance just feel so uninspired in comparison. On our very wind walk back to the hotel we spied the Empire State Building poking out every so often and I thought about what it’d be like trying to dock a Zeppelin to the top in those winds! (Aside: the design of the Empire State Building was such that at Zeppelins might dock to the top of the building and man would that have been absolutely amazing to see!)

After making our way back to the hotel in the crazy wind we decided that we didn’t really have a strong plan for the rest of the day. With our train being at 5pm we could probably have made more use of the day but with the wind and lack of planning we didn’t have a strong sense of what we’d do. We ended up making our way over to Moynihan Train Hall and grabbing a couple of day passes to Amtrak’s “Metropolitan Lounge.” The passes are $50 bucks a day for the NYC lounge and you get a spacious private lounge that lover looks the train hall, a buffet of food and non-alcoholic drinks, private cash bar, and pre-boarding of your train. All in all it didn’t feel like that bad a deal especially when we got a private escort right on to the train platform a good 15 minutes before everyone else. This made an already pretty hassle free experience of boarding the train (vs. any commercial airline experience in the US) pretty much sublime.

We spend a fair bit of the day looking out over the relatively new (apparently it has been 3 years?!) Moynihan Train Hall the primary arrival in NYC for Amtrak trains traveling the Northeast Corridor. Honestly the facility is impressive and apparently at one point in time was the primary mail sorting facility for the USPS in New York. The impression the openness and architecture provides on first arrival in my opinion rivals most of what I’ve experienced in the UK or Europe. A realization that comes with a twinge of frustration because it takes so much to get big infrastructure projects over the finish line in this country but look at the result when we do! When they happen, all to rarely, they’re a reminder that we can achieve things worthy of the greatness we like to ascribe to the fragile experiment we call America. Then it was time for the rain ride home which was the same relatively three hour trip but no quite as fun. Did get to spend a minute looking out at the gridlock on I-95 from the bar car though.

It was a fun mini-trip and we hope to do it a fair bit more in the future explore some more and hopefully meet-up with friends in the are on subsequent trips!

“New York is not a city, it’s a world.” – Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958)

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Ending the night with a few more drinks and some arcade games. I lost a few fighting game matches, but I beat my sister and Ben’s ass in Pac-Man Battle Royale #Barcade #PacMan #bandainamco #Namco #pacmanbattleroyale #stmarksplace #greenwichvillage #NYC #NY #newyorkcity #NewYork #Manhattan (at Barcade)