A Week in the Life of a Manhattanite
From the perspective of a quasi-New Yorker.
Click here for a guide on rooftops, date ideas, walkways, and more.
Hello everyone and welcome to the weekly blog! I’m Angelica, creator of Once Upon a Time in New York. I’m a second-year graduate student at Pace University studying publishing and I decided to create this page as part of an ongoing assignment for one of my editing classes. I’ll be writing about the various places I visit/discover plus social events I attend in the city! I find it so fascinating that the experience of every New Yorker can be vastly different, so I hope sharing my perspective will inspire you to visit a new place, or at least keep you entertained :)
Week 1: Sept 4-11
Tuesday: I had one week of summer break left before classes start. I decided to go to Heuk Hwa Dong, a dessert/boba shop in K-Town, to work on my website and continue my job search. I’d visited HHD for the first time a few weeks prior and loved how the space was set up with plenty of seating plus outlets under every table. I thought it would be a fun alternative to my usual café and I personally don’t know of any other boba place you can charge your phone in, so I thought bringing my laptop would be a good idea. Note to self: there isn’t any Wi-Fi and the service is so bad that my phone hotspot was pretty much useless. Other people had their laptops too but I have no idea how they got work done. I ended up using my phone (even though the internet was so slow) and reading for a bit before heading out. 10/10 menu and space to chill out, 0/10 place to actually work using the internet.
Wednesday: Visited my aunt and uncle at their home in Briarwood (which is a very long train ride from upper Manhattan) where a lanternfly landed on me and it took everything in me to not panic. On the way home, I decided to randomly surprise my friend in Sunnyside who I knew was WFH in a café. After unsuccessfully convincing him to head into the city with me, I went to a wine tasting in Flatiron solo. I’d gotten free tickets through DoNYC More (normally $145) and didn’t want to waste them. I probably tried about six types of wine before calling it quits to try and avoid being drunk on a Wednesday evening for absolutely no reason.
Friday: While waiting for a friend to meet up with me, I decided to go to a nearby beer hall in Brooklyn and had a long conversation with the bartender. When my friend finally decided to show up after a whole hour (I love you Jack), we went next door to our event: a wedding reception party without a wedding. We dressed up (me in a white dress, Jack in a tux), took pictures, danced, talked to random people, ate free pizza, signed the wedding card, and pretended, with a bunch of strangers, that we were actually celebrating a wedding. It was a weird event that I absolutely loved being a part of. It was like being at an adult prom. Afterwards, we went to Public Records (my first time)!
Saturday: The usual birthday party/Mission/K-Town shenanigans.
Monday: After the thunderstorm, a double rainbow appeared over Manhattan the night of 9/11. I think we can all agree that was one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever seen.