There is a great xkcd comic that says, “I’m happy to grow up. But I won’t pretend that fun things aren’t still fun out of fear of looking silly.” As a newcomer to NYC living – check out my previous post on life as a commuter – I’ve found the Big Apple provides many opportunities to embrace this motto.
Most recently, a flock of young-at-hearters descended upon Union Square for a pillow fight flash mob, with thousands of people participating. And if you’re looking to grab a drink in a place more reminiscent of your childhood friend’s basement than a bar, look no further than Fat Cat in the West Village, which offers rows of ping pong and foosball tables, among other games.
But my favorite childlike exploit in the big city so far infuses my life with a weekly dose of youthful glee – Skee-Ball. Last month, I joined Brewskee-Ball, the first ever league of its kind, and every Monday night my team rolls at Williamsburg’s Full Circle Bar, whose parody of the Old Spice Superbowl commercial was a recent hit on YouTube.
With more than 400 teams in NYC, San Francisco, Austin, Charlotte and Wilmington, NC, Skee-Ball is quickly becoming the next great American bar sport. It’s even caught the attention of mainstream media: NPR’s All Things Considered covered the past “skeeson” championship, ESPN.com posted a video tutorial from one Brewskee-Ball star roller, and The New York Times was rumored to be mulling about at this past Wednesday’s match.
If you can’t make it out to Brooklyn to watch an official league match, Manhattan plays host to two great Skee-Ball bars as well – Ace Bar in the East Village and Crocodile Lounge on East 14th Street, where you can get in touch with your inner child while earning a free slice of pizza with each beer you purchase. And, if all else fails, you can always download the iPhone app.
Having just found my first apartment in NYC after two and a half years of commuting from Connecticut, I am waxing a bit nostalgic about the 16 hours a week I share with the MTA Metro-North Railroad. Throughout my years on the train, friends, colleagues, clients and strangers have all commented on how exhausting the commute must be – and it has been – but there are certain aspects to the train ride that I have come to almost enjoy.
- The Ritual
There are intricacies about trains that you pick up after a few months of riding: the aisle seat in a three-seater is missing a head rest but is strategically positioned outside the frigid A/C stream; the window seats in winter are the warmest because you’re right next to the heater; train cars with bathrooms have a slightly latrine-y smell that no one wants to sit through for an hour-and-a-half. Only a commuter can understand how fulfilling it is to find the perfect seat on a given day – and the placebo calm that ensues because of it.
- The People
Through my time commuting, despite a few awkward encounters with the requisite train creeps, I have learned a lot about people and the way they live. From the self-confident dad sharing a sappy phoned-in “goodnight” with his kids, to the septuagenarian sleepily editing a script for the next big Broadway hit, to the girl nervously chattering with her middle school crush, each person has taught me something about who I am or reminded me of who I once was, and it’s been infinitely more entertaining and enlightening than television.
- The Time
You may be thinking, ‘Sarah, what do you mean “time”? If you weren’t on the train, you’d have even more time,’ and yes, that’s true. However, there is something freeing about being trapped in a train car for 90 minutes, because it’s almost required you do something to tap into your personal Zen. Be it reading, listening to music, watching videos or sleeping – there is little else you can do or be expected to do on a train. And that can be very relaxing.
As someone with a passion for people and a heavy case of wanderlust, I am lucky twofold: I work on an account that enables me to travel all over the country, and I work for an agency that affords me the time off for my own adventures. To give you an idea, since September, I have spent every weekend save one in a different city, stretching from Rome to Omaha, Las Vegas to Detroit.
This summer, a friend and I took a road trip through the South – starting in Trumbull, Connecticut and wheeling our way through West Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee before cutting across the Bible Belt to Georgia and heading home along the Coast. Our goal for the trip was to find the unique places and incredible people that make America amazing. I want to share a few of those with you – in the hopes you will take the time to see them in person – and am going to start with the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.
Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina
There is a reason why John Denver devoted an entire song to the Blue Ridge mountains, and while the ones he spoke about are in West Virginia (another truly beautiful state), the piece of the Blue Ridge Parkway that stretches into North Carolina holds the same sweeping landscapes and rolling mountains. You will want to stop at every scenic overlook because each is more gorgeous than the last. A few side trips you ought to make are:
- Switzerland Inn – An hour outside Asheville, NC in a town called Little Switzerland, this inn is located just off the Blue Ridge and offers an incredible view of the surrounding mountains. The main lodge, with its giant wooden buttresses and floor-to-ceiling glass windows, is a size that can only be found by leaving the cramped Northeast. In addition to rooms that adjoin the lodge and individual villas, for $65/night, you can stay in the motorcycle lodge with other Blue Ridge travelers stopping by on their own road trip. And if you’re lucky, you just might meet some interesting locals at the hotel bar.
- Orchard at Altapass – Ten minutes down the road from the Switzerland Inn is an orchard that has just about anything you ever wanted in a jar, right down to the jalapeno jam. Grab some fudge for the road, and if it’s a weekend, stop by for the live music and dancing with the locals.
- Mount Mitchell – Considering it is the highest point east of the Mississippi, Mount Mitchell keeps a fairly low profile. Another short drive from the Switzerland Inn, you can take your car nearly to the top and hike about five minutes to the main overlook. From here, you can see points as far away as South Carolina and Tennessee. And of course it blows every other Blue Ridge scenic overlook out of the water.
Stay tuned for highlights from Tennessee and the rest of the South!
As someone who prides herself on being savvy regarding all things Digital Age, I am embarrassingly stuck in the Stone Age when it comes to technology. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been dialing up and logging on since 1994 and have even been known to troubleshoot an error or two, but when it comes to gizmos and gadgets, I’ll pick a paperback over a Kindle any day. My last large technology splurge was when I saved up $50 in the third grade to purchase a My Magic Diary. That is, until I woke up one month ago and took a giant leap into the 3G world.
After forty days of courtship, I am head-over-heels in love with my iPhone. If I weren’t categorically against Facebook relationships, I would make a profile for my iPhone and describe us as “Engaged.” Because it’s got me 100% engaged.
For the first time in my life, I own a piece of technology that actually makes my world easier. My last phone had Scotch tape holding together what pieces of the keyboard still remained, the menu touted a radio feature that never seemed to work, and I could count the number of pixels in a photo with my naked eye.
These days, StationStops tells me what track to head to when catching my train home to Connecticut, Scramble 2 is so challenging that I’m memorizing vocabulary words for the first time since SAT prep, and DoodleBuddy has helped me discover an inner Picasso.
In my pre-3G days, I didn’t see what purpose a smartphone served; all I needed was a metal box that could send and receive messages and calls. Purchasing an iPhone has opened me to a whole new world of simplicity and enabled me to learn more about myself and my own interests. In short, it’s been the best boyfriend I’ve ever had!
(Note: The image above is an original work by me, made on my iPhone.)
Last month, a member of my favorite online community the social bookmarking site reddit.com posted a last-ditch plea for help. User stilesjp’s mother couldn’t make her mortgage payments and his sister was working two jobs because the family’s soap-making business Soapier had become a victim of the current recession. Stilesjp shared his story and asked us to simply buy some soap at a discounted reddit rate and the response is yet another example of what I love about the Internet.
Most “redditors” have never met one another, and after three years on the site I could only name for you a handful of users. But what makes this and other online communities so special and important is that we share a bond as strong as any felt in the “real world.” People came out in droves to support stilesjp and his family: purchasing “soap by the slice,” registering for the e-newsletter, forwarding the link, and providing marketing and Web site design advice. A quick look at compete.com shows the Soapier site’s traffic went from 456 unique visitors in April to 16,738 in June.
The resulting attention spread far beyond reddit alone. Bay News 9 in Tampa interviewed the family, and WomanEntreprenuer.com featured Soapier in a blog post on the merits of social media. Soap orders continue to pour in as more and more people hear about the company. All this because a site full of programming nerds and Digg defectors not your likeliest target audience for handmade soap decided to upvote a stranger’s post.
In a true testament to just how far we will go for a fellow redditor, the community requested and received our own personalized soap with the reddit logo. It comes in reddit’s favorite scent, bacon, as well as a more socially acceptable orange-scented version.
As marketers and promoters, we can get caught up in the utility of the Internet, seeing it as a means to an end and overlooking its true value. So, I’ve decided to spend some time sharing with you what I love about the Internet. To say it simply, I believe the Internet gives us access to two priceless commodities: people and information, the first of which I’ll speak about today.
In my 15 years on the Internet, I’ve witnessed countless people limit their online social experience to conversations with their offline social network. Their interaction with strangers, if any, is limited to the 500-character comment box below a blog post or a one-off messageboard reply. My experience has fortunately been the opposite.
From the day I registered my first username, I immersed myself in chat rooms, searched profiles for common interests and IMed strangers the world over. And while my parents would’ve had a heart attack to learn their 10-year-old’s hobby, it exposed me to invaluable perspectives that continue to affect my mind’s prism.
I learned about poverty from Tyler, an Oklahoman I met when we were both in 8th grade. Three years later, I was applying to Boston University (my future alma mater), excited for the only imaginable next step I’d considered following high school. But Tyler’s dad was a painter on disability for a broken arm when two planes flew into the World Trade Center, wounding our economy in the process. Tyler’s family told him they couldn’t afford to board him after graduation.
The concept was lost on me initially pain felt in New York rippling all the way to Tulsa but my conversations with Tyler opened my eyes to a world beyond my youth in Fairfield County, Connecticut. I became ever more grateful for my own parents, who’d built me a lucky foundation to make my life a happy success, and I was, in turn, grateful for knowing Tyler.
It was a lesson I could have learned from news reports or perhaps from reading a Dickens novel. But it was infinitely more real and humbling coming from a peer in an emotional, vulnerable online conversation.
