I feel about it like I felt about Tokyo. Didn't see enough. Need to go back. Need to take Severin.

The gameshow was fail, Marvel was fail, ten minutes at DC made up for it!!!

I stayed in a hostel for the first time. In the three days I was there, ten or so people rotated in and out of the seven other beds. I think I was the only one who'd been born in the US. There were two Swedish girls who lived up to the Swedish stereotype of being hot, and to the European stereotype of smoking lots. Like, smoking the cheapo stogies that come in a four pack and have plastic tips, just like my dad used to. There was a boy there who came from Tokyo, though (for some reason) I felt too shy to mention I'd been there.

The stereotype about New Yorkers being rude was soundly disproved by every New Yorker I met, from the scary subway man with broken-fence teeth and knit cap (who helped me find the train I needed to take to Columbia--unasked!) to the street vendor who opened his own wallet so he could give me a two-dollar bill as part of my change, to the lobby attendant at 1700 Broadway who did everything he could to help me get upstairs to see Mark Chiarello (including pep-talking me into calling the guy one...more...time.)

And the beggars in New York are so charismatic sometimes, it's hard to even think of them as beggars. A poet got on the train between one subway station and the next, and wove a rhythmic tale of his coke-addled mom and his absent dad. He handed copies to us listeners, sometimes trading them for dollars, before making a perfectly-timed exit.