Do Homeless People Get Knock-knock Jokes?

Its been a while since the last update. Besides from just being lazy we do have some reasons...

Initially we intended to stay in New York for the first two weeks of the trip and then either go to DC or Boston, hence why we only booked a hostel in New York for two weeks...that makes sense right?! Well it did until something unexpected happened! About two days before we were suppose to be moving somewhere else we got some surprise guests from back home in the form of Ciara and Eugene. It was a great surprise as now Dearbhla had someone other than the back of Marks head to talk to (I kid, we talk to her...sometimes). Apparently they planned a secret trip to New York and kept it quiet for about three months which is fairly impressive. That in itself didn't really change plans too much as they're over here for their own holiday and not to entertain us bastards. Moving was still on!

We all calmed down after the excitement and planned a nice evening out celebrate their unexpected but pleasant arrival...nothing mad, maybe a bit of food and a few drinks, classy like, that's how we are. However, our plans didn't exactly go as planned. We left the hostel and started heading towards the subway with Mark about 20 feet ahead, nothing strange there. He suddenly darted across the road barely avoiding oncoming cars like a game of frogger and started greeting what I thought was homeless people. No one had any idea what was going on (besides from Ciara and Eugo) as we followed him (carefully) across the road.

Standing on the traffic island in the middle of the road, dressed like a pair of office clerks were Sweeney and Adam...excuse me here for a second but...what the f**k!? Apparently they too had booked flights to America and kept it a secret from us. All I can really remember from that moment was Sweeney talking at me with his giant smiley head and me not being able to concentrate on a word. So as it stood, almost half the people from home were now in New York. A classy quiet night was quickly ditched in favour of a dive bar and enough drink to make the Statue of Liberty seem attractive. For the time being at least, moving was off!

As great as all this was, it left us in quite, as Mark Fisher would put it, a pickle. We has to find a new hostel in New York as the only rooms that were available in our old hostel had been taken by our surprise guests. Essentially our friends came over to America to surprise us...and then kicked us out onto the streets, thanks lads!

The hostel search was on, it was kind of exciting for a while until we realised that nowhere had room. We eventually got a room in a nice hostel just down the road for one night...it had some cockroaches in it, but they were mostly dead so we got on fine. We managed to book another hostel in Columbus Circle for two nights. This one was actually quite nice. We had to split up into separate rooms because that's the only way they could fit us in. I ended up in a room of Austrians who introduced themselves by asking me if I had ever seen a ginger Indian man...I hadn't...so they showed me.

After we got settled into our new hostel we went out that night to see the first showing of Inception. It was hands down one of the best films I've seen in years. I understood what was happening, but there's no way I could explain it. Go see it if you haven't!

At this point it was time to start looking for our new hostel. We found a great place called New York Loft Hostel out in Brooklyn. It's has free breakfast from 6 - 9am (only Dave made it to it so far but that was after staying up all night) and a hot tub. What else could you want. There was a catch however, they did have room for us for the week...but not the first night! Mark and Dearbhla took this as a sign to abandon ship and go visit Marks aunt in New York and the rest of us genii (point proven there) looked at it as a challenge. A challenge that would save us money and would be at least a story..."The Homeless Challenge".

This might seem obvious but being homeless sucks! We weren't properly homeless (more bedless) by any stretch of the imagination and it was still horrible. Our tactic was to try napping in the common areas in the hostels we had been in before...which worked quite well. We tried to sleep in shifts outside Central Park for a bit but we eventually ended up in our first hostel. Dave had a full three seater couch to himself and me and Conor slept curled up in the foetal position on a two seater, crying ourselves to sleep. It was fairly miserable but we managed to get some sleep and we saved some money! The next day we checked into where we are now, New York Loft Hostel.

We've spent a lot of time this week relaxing (sure we're on holidays) and strolling around Central Park (I have some great videos of street performers I'll put on the YouTube channel) and started drinking a bit more to accommodate for Adams needs. We made few American and Aussie friends as well so drinking happens a lot these days. Besides from drinking here's a list of places we've been: Yankee Stadium, New York bus tour, The John Stewart Daily Show (stand up comedy) in Central Park, Greenwich Village, the lads went up the Empire State Building, baseball games in Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge.

All the pictures should be at the bottom, they tell a better story than I ever could so check them out. I'll upload some videos soon as well. Tonight were all off to see Spurs play the New York Red Bulls...can't wait to throw a burger at Henry!

That's all for now, hopefully the next update will be more interesting and sooner than this.

Kieran

Location:Varet St,Brooklyn,United States

Dardis-vision: NYC Through the Eyes of a Child

"Got up at around 5am with Conor. We had some Mcdonalds before heading down to the rockafeller plaza to the taping of the today show where lady gaga was performing for free. had a bit of a laugh there and saw gaga for a bit. we were right beside the pretty hot nbc anchorwoman so hoping we made it onto tv! left the taping early...on the way home bumped into the taping of fox and friends where we saw conservative legend Steve Doocy. Then we swung by the taping of abcs morning show on abc on times square!. Interesting morning.....Got home for a nap before heading down to the museum of natural history with derv for awhile(ill defo be heading back cos its class!). Then derv headed off home while i went off for a bit of aimless wandering. Ended up outside John Lennons apt/place he was shot on 79th st. Then i headed off down to the west side of manhatten to walk along the banks of the hudson. walked for about an hour and a half before i made it to the intrepid aircraft carrier where i noticed a large crowd even though it was closed! After some sneaky eavesdropping i found out they were screening ghostbusters on the deck of the carrier for free. An hour later when the sun set i was kicked back watching ghostbusters with the classy new york skyline behind me. all i can say is what an unbelievably great evening. new yorkers are actually the coolest people! following the film i made for home by walking towards times square. on the way i noticed a large crowd of people outside an off broadway theatre where it was advertised that kelsey grammer was performing. and no surprises kelsey grammer was outside signing autographs!!! couldnt believe my luck and i got some cool pics of the frasier legend! A short while later i made it to times square where there was a convoy of gangbangers with souped up cars and unbelievably mental hydraulics!!Made it home awhile later with an unbelievable profound respect for how great this city is!!!" - Mark

The (Empire) State of Us

We're about a third of the way through the holiday, just over halfway through our bank accounts and we've only seen a quarter of what New York has to offer. There's just too much to see and do in this city!

Since the last update we've started to split up a bit more as a group (it's not as dramatic as it sounds) and go on our own adventures. Dave mostly ends up in China Town or anywhere that sells Orangina, I'm drawn to giant buildings and the ongoing search for a Taco Bell, Dearbhla's constantly trying to catch up with Mark (she's having fun though...everyone likes chasing right?!) who's on a one man mission to eat New York and Cony Ro Ro (that Conors forced nickname thanks one of our new German friends) spends most of his time hungover and getting us excited about baseball games that aren't on!

Thanks to last night I have to go back through my video camera to piece together what we got up to the last few days...

Since we watch nothing but American TV at home we had to go visit the home of 30 Rock (situated conveniently at 30 Rockefeller Plaza). We took the 'Top of the Rock' tour which placed us 67 floors above New York with a great view of most of the city. After we got down we wandered around the overly fancy 5th Avenue where we got a bit freaked out as we realised we were being watched! Perched on the corner of at least twelve massive buildings were dark 'I Am Legend-ish' figures overlooking the street. On closer inspection they were just statues and not a gang of mutants or some kind of collective suicide attempt! Either way...strange!

Later on that night we went out for drinks in the best bar I've ever been in, crazy stuff all over the walls (there was a photo montage of a chicken wing eating competition...inevitably the last
picture was sick in a toilet). They served food till 2am, it was cheap, tasty and huge...corndogs are confusingly delicious, but the best thing was the drinks, $1 all night! Success!!

The next day we just lazed about in the hostel And watched the match I think. It's too hard to keep track of things what with all the stuff we're doing, combined with the semi-permanent brain damage sustained from $1 drinks.

The next day was my little adventure. We were aimlessly riding the subway and no one really knew what we were going to do. So I stood up and just got off at a stop by myself...it wasn't a conscious decision to go it alone, but no one followed me...pricks!

The first thing I did was make my way to Madison Square Garden. It was all closed up though because of the LeBron James announcement. I saw the Chrysler Building in the distance and figured it was a 10 minute walk away......40 minutes later I was in the lobby! Unfortunately that's all you can do, stand in the lobby! After that a found the HBO headquarters, same situation as the Chrysler Building there. After those two let downs I was determined to do something good so I went to the Empire State Building. Two hours of queues and 87 floors later I was on the top. Well worth it! I had a complete 360 degree view of all of Manhattan, it was amazing. It was eerily silent at the top even though it was packed...no one talked. The rest of that day was spent trying to find Taco Bell (when I found it it was closed) and eventually going to Wendys for 'The Baconator', it has to be seen to be believed. As far as I know the rest of the lads had to put up with Marks new found love of basketball/LeBron James and got some sweet $1 pizza in Time Square.

And finally Friday...yesterday. We finally went to the Natural History Museum after days of threats. It was great, but I have to go back because I couldn't find the dinosaurs which is saying something about the size of this place. That's pretty much all we did during the day...besides Mark, but he'll tell you all about that in his own post. Needless to say it sounded disgustingly (because I did get to to it) great!

While Mark was off on his adventure, Derv went to Central Park to read...but was eventually scared out of there by a not so friendly looking group of people trying to sit all over her (not literally)!

As for the rest of us (Me, Dave and Conor), we went to a pub called Tap A Keg! This is how that went: casual drinking, got talking to some America people, they bought us the biggest shots I've ever had (it was like drinking Whiskey out of a Nutella jar), a bit of pool, more free drinks from the bar woman, talcum powder everywhere (don't ask...), horrible food which Dave later lamped all our room because it was too salty, I got Iced, everyone passed out! Success!

Right, that should do it for now, I'll upload pictures when they fix the computers in here!

Later,
Kieran.

Goodbye My Cony Island Baby

I think it's about 3 days since the last update, it's to hot to keep track of anything really! It's like being in an oven.

Since the last update we've had a strange few days, we didn't really do much but still had a great time!
One day involved trying to walk the length of Central Park to get to the Apple Store, but bottling it and get the taxi! Either way we got there and it was pretty cool, it's basically a giant glass cube on top which is just the entrance with the actual shop underground. I learned two things there, Americans love the iPad...and the iPad is crap! It's a table mat that can play music, give me a frying pan with a radio any day!
After that we went next door to the biggest toy shop in the world, probably would have enjoyed it a bit more if I was a kid. It did have one of those giant floor pianos but there were too many kids on it to have a bash.
We went back into Central Park after that where we rented rowing boats. It was a good laugh rowing in circles, chasing ducks, trying to watch the match from the lake and being general retards.

We had our first proper night out that night in a great bar called "The Heights". Here's a brief summary of how that went: very generous bar staff when it comes to vodka, political arguments (I think you can guess who it was between), finding an American Sweeney called Jaque. The only way to describe him is that he was like a Dave Chappelle character. I think this quote sums him up nicely, "Fuck you, you guys wanna come back to mine?! We gonna play some fuckin FIFA and smoke a blunt!" (said in a gangster American accent of course). Great night!

We paid for it the next day though, we were all in bits. Dave went to China town by himself in the morning and a few of us went to Central Park to cry. The rest of the day was spent watching shit films in the hostel!

Yesterday, Independence Day, started with high hopes. We went to Brooklyn to try find a 16 hour rave, but got the address wrong and ended up at the place where you buy tickets instead. What we did was like trying to go to a concert in the RDS and end up running around outside a ticketmaster! After that we got some dodgy Mexican food, sweated a lot, went to Cony Island, sweated more...then went home feeling a little deflated from all the pointless traveling.

The day was completely saved by the fireworks that night. We watched them from Central Park with a few cans and fireflies every where. I have some great videos of it, so ill try get them up soon. I'll put up pictures of those few days later on too.

Later, "The Lads"

Location:W 101st St,New York,United States

First Impressions

Right, this will have to be a short one. We've been here for 2 days so far and its fairly amazing!

The first day all we did really was travel, 7 hours on a plane and a taxi ride with the worst music imaginable (Celine Dion came up at one stage!). We checked out time sqaure, it was nuts. I'm not sure if I even saw what was there because of the amount of lights and LCD screens but definitely worth going back to. Besides that we found a great Jazz/Funk bar that we'll definitely be going back to. Mark and Dearbhla saw Bubbs from the wire on the plane, but Mark bottled it on a picture...common trait in this holiday so far!

The second day (today) we got up nice and early and basically walked all over Manhattan. Got breakfast in the sweetest diner ever, just so happened to be the diner Brad Pitt had his last meal before being knocked down in 'Meet Joe Black'...hate that! Bopped on over to Staten Island waved at the Statue of Liberty, went to ground zero (not much there really, but what do you expect!) and then we strolled over to 30 Rock...no sign of Alec Baldwin, but we'll find him. Found a deadly sweet shop with a giant chocolate fountain. One lesson anyway, when you get chocolate on your face...don't make jokes about being 'a chocolate faced bastard' on the sub way. Its not as innocent as it sounds over here.

Gotta go now, time running out on this shitty computer! Time for dinner and a few drinks!

From everyone!

Future Sights

This is what we'll be looking at in a matter of hours!