After spending days lounging around in the sun and surfing on deserted beaches of North Carolina's Outer Banks (OBX if you're nasty), it was time for a change. Luckily, NC is a state that allows you to go from one extreme to the other pretty easily, so long as you manage, unlike me, not to get lost in Dismal Swamp. From the flat expanses of the Outer Banks, and without only a brief pit stop dedicated to the aforementioned getting lost (extended somewhat by the fact that I got caught in the middle of a massive frog migration, which is weird enough on its own and made a whole lot weirder by the fact that this is actually the second time I've been halted in my vehicle by a massive frog migration), I shot due west and straight into the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains to meet up with an old friend and put a feather in my knit cap by hiking the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi: 6,648 foot tall Mount Mitchell.
It was also a grand chance to make one of the most beautiful drives in all of the Americas: the Blue Ridge Parkway in autumn...
Read the rest of: "Mount Mitchell and the Blue Ridge Parkway"» 
In New York City, you're more likely to see a butterfly tattoo than you are an actual butterfly. You'll probably see more flower-selling than flowers growing. Bombarded as New Yorkers are by honking horns, flashing lights, jackhammers, sirens and psychoses, it's important to find some places where you can get away. Where the noise dies down a bit, and the flow of people slows to a comfortable trickle.
Conservatory Garden in Central Park is just that kind of place...
Read the rest of: "Conservatory Garden"» 
Rockefeller Center is a symbol of New York. The annual lighting of the giant Christmas tree and the iceskating rink infront of is has come to define Christmas in New York. Home to countless businesses, NBC, Christie's auction house and retail shops, Rockefeller Center IS New York.
Emphasizing this, artist Anish Kapoor designed an installation highlighting this notion. The Sky Mirror, a temporary exhibition, is a giant concave disk made of stainless steel, and placed at the entrance to the Rockefeller Compound on 5th Avenue. The giant mirror reflects the top of the center and the sky, bringing it to the ground on 5th Avenue. The opposite concave side reflects the hustle and bustle of the street. The sculpture, although physical, represents a window or a view, rather than being an object itself.
Kapoor also designed the permanent famous "giant bean", called Cloud Gate at Chicago's Millenium Park. Also made of stainless steel, Cloud Gate warps Chicago's skyline, bringing it closer and framing the viewer.
 If you are anything like me and you live in New York, going grocery shopping is a nightmare. I feel like a loser lugging those old lady carts across town, but decent grocery stores are few and far between. I've actually found myself attempting to create a healthy diet based solely on the inventory of my corner deli. After contemplating buying a pale peach colored tomato, I decided ENOUGH! I need nutrients! I want to remember what real vegetables taste like, and not just some shriveled mass posing as produce...
Read the rest of: "Union Square Market"»  The breeze is coming in warm and soft off the rolling waves, and I'm midway into a caffeine and lack of sleep haze that won't send me crashing for several hours yet, listening to the wheels grind slowly over hungry piles of sand criss-crossed with footprints and tire tracks.
It's sunny, warm, I haven't worn a shirt or shoes for days, and there must be ten pounds of sand that I've managed to track into the Jeep since I started this little adventure. Since putting rubber to the asphalt and sand of Highway 12, I've eaten nothing but boil-in-a-bag grub from Backpackers Pantry. Drank nothing but water, rum, and Red Bull, often all in one sitting...
Read the rest of: "The October Session: North Carolina's Outer Banks in Autumn"» 
Canadians aren't the only ones who get to
delight in autumnal apple picking. Even the young at heart of the big city can enjoy the pleasures of fall! A day in the country picking apples is just an hour or two away from the Big Apple.
Long Island is home to countless pick-your-own farms, and is a cinch to get to from NYC. With these last Indian summer days, its prime time for an escape to the farm before winter sets in...
Read the rest of: "A Fall Day in the Hamptons"» 
Until 1986, the site of the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens, was an illegal riverside landfill, abandoned and ugly.
A group of local artists got together and decided to turn the area into a park and outdoor museum...
Read the rest of: "Socrates Sculpture Park"» It's 5 am. You've just wandered from the far east side of Alphabet City, in search of pizza, a hot sandwich, SOMETHING that isn't deli chips. But everything is closed!
Wander no more! Hot food awaits at the corner of St. Marks and 2nd Avenue in the East Village...
Read the rest of: "Hot Bamn!"»  On my first visit to Grassroots Tavern, I accepted a $3 pint of Red Hook ESB from the bartender—which in New York City, is a pleasant surprise in and of itself. Being one of New York's many subterranean drinking dens, the place has a basement feel—with low, ornate tin ceilings and weathered wood surroundings. There was a cat walking the wooden planks, which had been blackened from over sixty years of drunken shuffling. The bartender, an efficient man in his sixties, worried out loud that the cat might get downstairs into the basement.
I started to feel a bit like I was in someone's home, and that's always a good sign...
Read the rest of: "Grassroots Tavern"»  Sometimes being a tourist in my own city is my favorite thing to do. It gives me a fresh perspective on the city I love, and the break from my routine (subway, homework, class, subway, homework, class) inspires me to explore my terrain even further.
Typically, I associate most goings-on in Central Park with tacky tourists, but who's to say I myself am not tacky?! It was with great gusto and old New York romantic notions that I rented a row boat with my friends on the Lake in Central Park...
Read the rest of: "Row Your Boat Gently Across Central Park"»
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