One of my incredibly unusual habits

Sometimes, when I can't go to sleep or I'm up late studying for a midterm or doing homework or writing a paper, I'll kill a ton of time looking up New York City, specifically Manhattan. I don't know what it is, but I have always had this incredible fascination with the City of New York. I have this really stupid romanticized fantasy image of it in my head, constructed almost entirely out of cliched movie scripts, late night slow jazz radio, and television dramas. (Watching Carrie, Charlotte, Sam, and Miranda certainly don't help. And shut up. Everyone gets one guilty pleasure trash show.)

Here's what I do: I look up a picture of New York City by Googling something like "NYC map" or "NYC boroughs." I scroll through the map and look at all the different names of neighborhoods that I've heard of through movies, books, magazines, television, what have you. I then Wikipedia those neighborhoods and read about all the cool things, people, and places around there. I look up the local universities (ok, Columbia) - I practically know the Columbia campus by now because I've done their online tour so many damn times. I know the names of the neighborhoods and I know some major defining characteristics of the important ones.

Most importantly, I look up all the best eateries in the area. More than architecture, more than the history, I think the local specialties are what really define areas. Maybe it's just because I love food too much, but picking out great places to eat is definitely one of my favorite activities. It's especially important when I have to show friends around or even just go out to eat with the usual suspects - a meal can make or break an evening. The eateries are my North African battlegrounds, and I am their Rommel. Without the whole, you know, forced to commit suicide thing post-failed-Hitler-assassination-plan thing.

Here's why I think I'm so fascinated with New York: based on all the crap that I read about how each neighborhood has its own special flavor, history, and culture, I want to try to understand and maybe even feel out what those special characteristics may be. I've never been to New York. I had the chance in junior year of high school for the band trip, but leave it to my Achilles' Tendon to give out like a whiny bitch (and by whiny bitch I mean like a dominatrix giving me lashes for being an oh-so-naughty boy). It's almost as if my body desperately wanted to stay in California and therefore took extreme measures to keep me here...extreme measures that led to a smoking hot, five-foot-even, 32-22-34 Filipina nurse inserting a Foley catheter into my...how you say...penis while the lower half of my body was still completely numb in order to relieve my bladder of the ridiculous amount of urine that was stored. But I digress.

I really want to visit New York City and fall for all the tourist traps. I want to run around and take fifty million pictures while furthering the stereotype of the Asian tourist.

Maybe I'm just too Californian. I seriously love California to death, but I think it may be necessary for me to get out of this sunshiny, palm tree lined, perfectly-weathered bubble after I graduate. I'll definitely be applying to schools out east, and if given the opportunity (and that opportunity is good enough), I will get to experience really cold weather and this supposed "East Coast tough" that I read about so much. I've never been a fan of old money douchebaggery, what with their yacht clubs and ivy-lined houses and WASP culture and shit. Not that there isn't any of that out here on the Left, but I feel that the yuppie culture is somewhat more dominant here. Maybe I simply haven't been exposed to the world enough to really know what I'm talking about.

Then after I'm done with school out east, I'm pretty sure I'll move back to California after I realize how much the east coast licks monkey balls.