To recap, we decided to take a break from Luna Park and come to Times Square for no reason and had a harrowing experience on the subway. Now here are pictures (both from my phone and my precious baby girl Charmera) and hopefully only a few words because I am so behind.

Saw this after the ANGRY MAN incident happened — is it BLOOD? An OMEN?

Chooch saw some broad at Luna Park wearing an I <3 NY shirt and it made him remember that he has “always” wanted to get one to be ironic? So we had to be extra obvious tourists and pop into one of the many souvenir stores so he could get one which was actually so annoying until I realized A DAY LATER that we were in NYC at the same as WAYV (part of NCT, you wouldn’t understand!) and they were also in a souvenir store!!! PROBABLY NOT THE SAME ONE but still.

Henry and Chooch are usually my good luck charms when it comes to running into bands/etc that I love but they must be getting tarnished in their old age because we saw a nary famous person.

Anyway, Chooch bought this dumb shirt and then went to put it on the next day and even though he bought a large, it fit him like a $15 bodycon dress so guess who has an I <3 NY shirt now? Sigh.

I was happy to be there in general, but I didn’t know that Henry had chosen Times Square as our final destination because I would have definitely picked a different area. Also, this was so spur of the moment that LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE PLACE I have ever said, “Oh, I’d like to go there” over the last 5 years after seeing a YouTube video or Instagram reel was completely zapped from my memory so we kind of….just walked around with no plan. Like, in hindsight, we could have went to Chelsea Market!

But even though we’ve been to Times Square before and had absolutely no need to be there again, it was still fun to just be out and about and not in the amusement park bubble all day. Plus, people watching is superb as always.

Also, I was still playing the birthday card so Chooch posed for lots of forced-smile photos for me :)

I had to also save this photo as a video because the way Chooch quickly drops the smile at the end is the standard.

The Charmera was made for cities like NYC. I wasn’t even trying to frame aesthetic shots but Charmera gave them to me anyway.

Henry was very careful not to make ANY EYE CONTACT with these guys doing street dancing lest he get a double whammy of public humiliation AND swindled again.

I was trying to take a picture of this person dressed as LABUBU (I’m obsessed with them in case you didn’t know and have been asking for one for Christmas/my birthday for like three years and have still not received one) but Henry was all, “THEY’RE GOING TO MAKE YOU PAY FOR THAT’ causing me to photographically behead the precious LABUBU in a panic.

Cortis! I get happy anytime I see any KPOP group on a billboard that’s not BTS.

Anyway, during all this overstimming at Times Square, we were trying to find somewhere to eat that would make all of us happy. OK who are we kidding—something that Chooch and I could agree on, Henry doesn’t get a vote. Chooch wanted to go to some pingpong restaurant so we could eat and play pingpong but I wasn’t in the mood for games and it was still my extended birthday, so…

But then Chooch didn’t want to get pizza again, which is what I lowkey wanted…

We were getting close to the edge of hanger but then Chooch was like, ‘What is this fake Irish pub looking thing, oh look, they have veggie burgers.” I was already sold on the veggie burger, but then I saw on the menu that they had mushroom ravioli and you know what? I wanted that. So some old man saw us peeping the outside menu and ushered us through the door and up the steps to the restaurant portion of the Celtic Pub or whatever it was.

The old man ^^

Carrie Venmo’d me birthday beer money which I thought was so nice! So you know what? I GOT ONE. It was a Coney Island IPA! It was really good. Plus, I needed alcohol to desizzle my nerves after the subway scaries.

My ravs were pretty good and satisfying.

Chooch’s veggie burger, lol.

OMG you guys, the people at the table next to us were a nightmare for anyone with sound sensitivities and whatever the “aversion to the sound of mastication” is called—I know it but can’t remember and don’t feel like looking it up even though in the time it took me to type this just now I could have easily done so. I think it was a mom, dad, and older daughter situation going on. The daughter wasn’t offensive at all. She spoke quietly.

But the mom COULD HAVE BEEN JANICE FROM FRIENDS IF I KEPT MY EYES CLOSED to the point where I thought she was doing it on purpose. And she was so loud. The entire restaurant knows where they were staying because she kept screaming it for some reason. And then she was scrolling through her phone looking for things for them to do later, like ghost tours, and then she kept saying, “Or we can go to Greenwich Village” because so-and-so said that they should but she was pronouncing it GREEN-WITCH and I wanted to die.

The worst out of all three of them was the dad who was eating some giant fried seafood platter or something AND GROTESQUELY LICKING HIS FINGERS ONE-BY-ONE AFTER EACH BITE. He was sucking each one off so violently that there was a POP at the end of each one.

Chooch and I exchanged a GLANCE when it happened the first time and it ended up being the second trauma bond of the day.

There blows Janice and Finger-Licker.

I do regret not getting a grilled cheese and cheesecake at Juniors though. WE ALMOST WENT IN TWICE. But Chooch was being a baby about not wanting grilled cheese. (It was like the only option for us veg-dorks.)

Chooch had to stare at this large Spiderman ad outside the window the entire time and I was dying. He was so pissed about not being able to see the advanced screening because I had the nerve to have a birthday. SORRY I EXIST.

(He has seen it since then and only gave it a three on Letterboxd and said it was “just alright.” Or maybe it was 3.5, I can’t remember. That was a whole week ago.)

OH P.S. this restaurant was called THE PLAYWRIGHT. I had to look in my vacation journal—THIS IS WHT I KEEP A JOURNAL, YOU GUYS.

Passing by the weener again. The one great thing about Times Square is that absolutely no one pays attention to you because they are so preoccupied with taking their own pictures so I feel invincible there.

NYC makes Chooch turn into a 10-year-old again and he was screaming, “LET’S GO TO THE M&M STORE GUYS! LET’S GO SEE HAMILTON! I WANT TO GO TO THE LEGO STORE! I’M BORED! OOOH THE FAMILY GUY EXPERIENCE LET’S DO IT!” So annoying, lol.

Chooch was whining about wanting to go in the Pele store so we did. I was excited to see some Sonny and Haaland pictures but other than that I thought it was kind of dumb in there and said so.

“Yeah, I agree,” Chooch said and I couldn’t believe he was agreeing with me!!

We did randomly go in this…gourmet? designer? sardine store because the cool tins caught our eyes. Henry wouldn’t go in with us because he was probably afraid of the temptation. I actually did want him to buy some though so we could add more trash art to our hoarder’s gallery.

Then we went to Line Friends so I could buy some ZO&FRIENDS merch which if you didn’t know is a whole line of cute stuff based off of G-DRAGON’S cat Zoe <3 I got a plush blind box, a journal, and a pouch!

There was also some ATEEZ stuff too and I was so happy to see that this isn’t all BT21 bullshit, I do miss the original Line Friends though. We had gone a few times in Korea before BTS usurped it.

Jongho is my ATEEZ bias in case you didn’t know.

And then it was time to take the hour-long ride back to Coney Island so we could finish out the day at Luna Park and Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park. 

It was a whirlwind, but that’s the only way we know how to do anything!

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