This piece is a little unusual for me. Normally, I use my blog residency to express my mildly unjustified anger about whatever I am experiencing in a given moment. However, my co-editor, Shira, has inspired me to pursue the “travel blog” genre. AsI happened to go on a weekend trip in mid-January, I thought I might give it a try. But you also know that, if you have read my rant about driving in D.C., travel on the East Coast for me does not come without rage and chaos. So without further ado, here’s how my MLK Jr. Day weekend trip to visit my friend in Brooklyn went…

Friday: “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” 

Starting off strong, I only got around 4 hours of sleep the night before, so this day was off to a great start. I had not yet packed, despite my travel buddy Anya asking me numerous times throughout the week what bag I was going to bring. On the fateful day, I had class at 9:30 am, and wasn’t going to be done until the early afternoon, so anything I needed to arrange for the weekend had to be accomplished in the hour and a half before I had to pick up Anya.

What I ended up doing was throwing a bunch of random clothes in a large Trader Joe’s tote bag, then trekking a mile to where I parked my car in Burleith. I had to remedy a poor situation that I put myself in, which was that I like to drive my car until I literally have five miles left in my tank. So by the time I got to the gas station in Glover Park (because the Georgetown stations charge like $5 per gallon), I had 2 miles left in my tank. 🙂

BUT EVEN MORE EXCITING, I had been driving with low tire pressure for approximately two months. I thought that maybe if I was driving over three hours to and from the city, then I would probably need to make sure I didn’t get a flat tire and wreck my car. 

Guess what though? The gas station air compressor? Oh, it didn’t work. Duh. So, the air compressor situation was going to be a problem for later on my drive. 

After my failed gas station trip, I picked up Anya, and we began our travels to THE BIG APPLE, stopping multiple times on the way as I continued to be confronted with broken air compressor machines or machines without pressure gauges. Finally, in Jessup, Maryland, I found a working machine, but I had to exchange some cash for quarters in a very humiliating episode.

Apart from the tire situation, another mission on this drive was stopping at a Taco Bell to investigate whether the “Quesarito” and the “Grilled Cheese Burrito” were actually different. This idea came to me in an odd vision earlier in the week, and I immediately roped Anya into my curiosity (and also because I knew she was a big fan of the Grilled Cheese Burrito). 

AND TO OUR SURPRISE, THEY WERE DIFFERENT!

We determined that because the Quesarito is a “Quesadilla Burrito;” there is more tortilla than the grilled cheese burrito (it’s basically like a cheese quesadilla used as the wrapping of a burrito). The Grilled Cheese Burrito has the melted cheese directly on the inside of the tortilla (which is a way better ratio, in both of our humble opinions). Unfortunately, we were so excited about the experiment that we forgot to ask for sauce, which was incredibly tragic and would have made the experience so much better. 

With full bellies and our curiosity satisfied, I then proceeded to force Anya to listen to “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” by the Beastie Boys, a group that I find particularly annoying, but felt was right in the moment. Anya did not like the song, but it became the catalyst for our personally amusing but probably very annoying exchange, where we played songs about New York and then repeatedly said “Ahh, New Yawk,” to each other in terrible Brooklyn accents. 

An important note about this instance: WE WERE STILL IN MARYLAND. Not even within 100 miles of New York. As I came to this realization, I loudly exclaimed to Anya’s amusement, “MARYLAND IS THE BIGGEST STATE OF ALL TIME, AND I THINK WE’RE GOING TO BE STUCK HERE FOREVER.” Ironically, this was said from one Californian to another. 

To the tune of The 1975, and after more hours than the drive should have taken, we were able to see the New York City skyline in the distance from the terrible freeway in New Jersey. As I had been blindly following my Apple Maps, I then drove us straight through Staten Island, where I consistently and very dramatically kept shouting to Anya, “WHERE ARE WE GOING?” Anya just kept repeating “the Verazanno Bridge!” because it was on all of the street signs, and I mentally chalked it up to us having spent too much time in the car, but she was actually just quoting Margot Robbie in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” 

By about 9:30, we had successfully completed our drive, and I had a shockingly smooth experience parking directly outside of our friend Eliza’s apartment in Bushwick. While greeting her, Anya and I gifted Eliza a handful of the leftover quarters from my tire pressure fiasco, to which she responded, “Thank you, I’ll have these as a snack for later.” (#weirdo)

The rest of the night was much calmer, culminating in a couple-hour-long catch-up session. Anya fell asleep on Eliza’s couch, and I slept on something that resembled a very large dog bed, which Eliza also kept calling “the dog bed.” 

Saturday: “Biblically Accurate Bushwick”

“The dog bed” was actually quite comfortable, and I ended up sleeping an hour later than I anticipated, probably catching up on the sleep that I had lost the night before. Eliza had left because she had something to attend to at work, and Anya was already awake and showered. 

Once I had caught up to Anya, we set off for a gentrified cafe called “nook,” written in lowercase, of course. In the words of one of my friends I had texted about the experience in the cafe, it was “biblically accurate Bushwick.” The minute we walked in the door, we were greeted by “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings,” by Caroline Polacheck. The entire crowd looked like they lived in Bushwick, complete with “male manipulator mustaches,” thrifted Carhartt apparel, and funky sweaters. The baristas had shirts that said “Lesbians>” and “Autistic Lesbian,” which felt a little on the nose. My cappuccino and sandwich cost me almost $30. I kept laughing aloud at the situation because it seemed too stereotypical to actually be happening. 

Although we were supposed to get some homework done, Anya and I actually ended up staring out a window and people-watching for almost two hours while we sat in the cafe. At one point, it started snowing, which was very tranquil and beautiful, but was not something we had considered or accounted for when planning this trip (more on the snow later). 

Our next steps were super riveting. After splitting a pot of tea — a treat I had to order because sitting in the cafe required a purchase every 45 minutes — we went back to Eliza’s place to actually get some work done for about an hour! Isn’t that awesome! What a great use of our weekend! 

(Sorry, I’m being too cynical. The work was actually fine and needed to get done. And, I have had to do homework in worse places. It was nice to get out of D.C., no matter what.)

Then. The sound of jingling keys rang through the small apartment….Eliza was back!  

(I’m sorry, I’m trying to make this interesting…)

By this point, dinner time was approaching, and Eliza wanted to take us to her favorite Venezuelan restaurant a few blocks away from her house. IT WAS TO DIE FOR!

To start, I got a cocada, which was definitely non-alcoholic (*wink*). For those of you who don’t know, it’s sort of like a coconut milkshake. And normally, I detest coconut-flavored things, but this was fantastic. My main dish was great too, but I forgot what it was called. It also doesn’t help that this picture just makes it look like a dark, mysterious plate of meat and potatoes, but trust me guys, it was bomb. 

Now here’s the fun part. After dinner, we went to the Lower East Side to a bar called [REDACTED]. I was told not to publish the name of the place because, to sort of quote Eliza, “Don’t say [REDACTED] because every [BLEEP] is gonna wanna go there.”

Because the L train was down for repairs over the weekend, we took a different train from Brooklyn into Manhattan. Eliza told us to sit on one side of the train so we could see the skyline, but she actually directed us to the wrong side, so our backs were to the view. 

Once we got to the bar, we had a terse conversation with the bouncer to let us in because we wanted to order food (and that gives you priority, I guess). As we entered, I had this weird, unjustified gut feeling that I just HAD to know at least one person in that bar, given the demographics of the bar scene. Seated in a very loud corner on the smallest seats ever, the three of us had a lovely conversation by YELLING AT EACH OTHER OVER THE CHATTER OF EVERYONE ELSE AT THE BAR. 

At one point, a couple of guys to the right of us inserted themselves into our conversation, telling Eliza that she had a “Sadie Sink” vibe because she was wearing a striped shirt, and acting as though they were meeting the “bug-eyed Anya” (they meant Anya-Taylor Joy). 

Tired of the dim lighting and the noise, we tried to bar-hop, but gave up the moment we walked into a very millennial bar down the street. Instead, we stopped at a bodega on the way home and played in the snow on the roof of Eliza’s apartment building, ending the night on a high note.

Sunday: “If this town were an Apple”

I woke up on the dog bed, once again. In a traditional New York fashion (ew), we grabbed some bagels to start off the morning strong. I saved the rest of it because I couldn’t finish it, and I am not a breakfast person (more on this later).

I am now going to skip over the rest of the morning because it was a pretty anticlimactic time, including us packing and saying bye-bye to our wonderful host, Eliza. I will say we did leave her this note on a paper towel, along with our “rent” for the weekend. 

To actually say that we did something in Brooklyn instead of just staring out the window of a cafe, Anya and I rolled over to the Brooklyn Museum while blasting “Human Nature” by Michael Jackson. Neither of us are very big art people, and the Monet exhibit cost extra money to enter, so the majority of the museum was lost on us. However, there were some striking historical artworks I could appreciate. A highlight of the visit was when Anya looked at a statue over a millennium old, and very loudly said in the quiet museum, “It’s crazy how I can just push this over and break it right now.” 

Even if I couldn’t appreciate all of the art to the level that it probably deserves, the building was beautiful, and Anya and I had a good time making jokes throughout the whole museum. To usher us out, Lil Uzi Vert was blaring in the gift shop. How dignified!

Now, you may be wondering, “Fallon, are you done talking yet?” NO! Because we’re not even at the end yet. How could that be, you ask?

Well, as I was driving back through Staten Island with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the rest of my bagel, it started snowing again. On top of that, I was on a Zoom call for the Georgetown University Undergraduate Law Review, trying to see beyond my windshield, which was rapidly being coated in salt from the road. 

Something with my car’s windshield wiper fluid dispenser or whatever was broken, so I was slowly losing visibility. For a while, the snow melting on my car helped, but when the snow let up, I was in a bad spot. 

So as to not die, I had to stop about three different times at gas stations to wipe off my windshield, pictured here:

Long story short, we did not die. And, as a treat, we stopped at the Clara Barton Service Area on the New Jersey turnpike, and got ourselves some good old Burger King….because nothing else was open and we were starving. But hey, there’s nothing more comforting than driving back into Georgetown in the middle of the night with your belly full of chicken fries.

Later: An Unexpected Message…

Remember how I said I had to know someone in that bar? 

A couple of days after we got back, my old roommate texted me out of the blue, asking if I had gone to [REDACTED] over the weekend because her current roommate had spotted me there. 

So basically, the moral of the story and this trip: my intuition is awesome, and I am always right. 

The end.