What is it about New York? I turned to look out the window on the far side of the plane; strained to get a glimpse of America’s largest city. I couldn’t see. But what I did see was that many were doing the same. Passengers from every row leaned toward a window, rose in their seats, adjusted to see around others doing the same. I caught a glimpse of the skyline sans Twin Towers. A child behind me asked if they could see the Statue of Liberty. “Tomorrow,” the father answered. What is it about New York?

I was in New York this week for OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project). The meeting was somewhat hit and miss. Some of the speakers were really good and some some were awful. Overall the speakers had good information and you could tell that there was a shift from protecting against web app problems to malware. Malware is software that gets deceptively installed on your computer and causes problems and it is estimated as many as 1 in 3 computers is infected. So some of the talks were on how to protect your website when you can’t even trust your customers computers.

Our first adventure was getting from Laguardia airport to our hotel in Jersey City, a trip that necessitated crossing the East river into Manhattan and then the Hudson river into New Jersey. At the exit of the airport we saw a man in a red vest, an indication that he was there to assist tourists. We asked him where we could find the New York express bus to Penn station. He directed us to a man in a blue vest outside. The man in the blue vest sold us two tickets and asked us to have a seat and he would let us know when our bus arrived. He was very nice and even waived us off when we stood because we thought a different bus was ours. Our bus finally arrived and he waived us to come over.

The driver of the bus also had a blue vest. He explained that because President Bush was in town addressing the UN, that traffic was snarled everywhere. We boarded the bus and the bus stopped at several locations to pick up others. Our final stop was at the exit of the airport where another man in a blue vest took our tickets. So far we had been on the bus for 40 minutes.

We then left the airport and made our way slowly into the city, taking a tunnel into the city. We reached Grand Central station and were told that we need to transfer from here to a bus to Penn station. We hadn’t heard anything about a transfer so we were a bit confused. We stepped out of the bus and were greeted by a couple of guys with no blue vests. The one who addressed us looked like he was straight out of the Sopranos. He asked where we were going in a thick Brooklyn accent. We told him Penn Station and he told us to stand over there and wait. We did so and as we waited we saw a woman struggling with her suitcase. She asked the gentleman how to get somewhere and he pointed to the direction that she needed to go. She asked if she could get some help moving her bag across the street. “I don’t get paid for that, ma’am,” He responded. He called one of his guys over and told him “Anthony, help this lady get her bags across the street and then get right back here. I don’t get paid for this. Ma’am, Anthony’s going to help you across but that’s as far as he can go. I don’t get paid for this.”

He then looked at us, called another man over and told him, “These guys are going to Penn Station.” Addressing us he said “He’ll take you to Penn Station.” We were then led to a very run down short bus with its windows all open and the top door hatch missing. We hopped in and were soon off to Penn Station.

From Penn station we hopped the New Jersey train and headed to our hotel. Our hotel was located in Jersey City and was right beside the train station, so it made for very easy access to all of New York.

Our first few times on the subway were in adventure. Among thousands of people who knew what they were doing, we struggled to determine which type of subway cards to buy, which train led us the right direction and a few times ended up on the wrong tracks wondering what was taking our “Q” line so long to get there. On our first morning in New York, we saw a rat running between the rails.

Rick and I had both been to New York before so we tried to hit a few tourist places that we hadn’t seen in our previous trips. In between sessions, I walked to the Apple store on 5th avenue. The cube was smaller than it appears in pictures, but the spiral staircase was larger than it looks. The whole store is under the plaza, but other than just being larger, it is a regular Apple store. Besides the size of the store, the only difference I saw was that next to the Genius Bar there was also a Creative Bar. But the place was packed. Hundreds of people were milling about, trying the machines, checking email, buying etc. The checkout line was long and personal shoppers were running around ringing up sales for customers. After trying a few iPod and iPhones out, I made my way outside. On the way in, I had walked on the wide side of the spiral staircase; as I walked out I was on the narrow part of the stairs. It surprised me and it took a few steps to get my footing. I was surprised just how narrow the steps were at this point.

Looking behind the Apple store, I saw FAO Schwartz. I decided that I couldn’t pass that up. I walked in the front door and was surprised by how small the store looked. It was narrow (30 yards wide?) but very tall and deep. There were escalators that led to a second floor. I decided to explore the first floor. What I discovered was that though the store was narrow it was long. It kept going back and back and back. It was divided into small rooms and each room had a different theme. At the back were more escalators leading down to a small basement level that was dedicated to infants and toddlers.

I walked back to the front and went up the escalator. As I went up, I was flanked by large stuffed animals: Dinosaurs that were as tall as I was, a life size buffalo, and a 15-foot long Nazgul. The prices for these were in the hundreds of dollars. At the top of the escalator was a shop for adult collectors and all of it was expensive. I turned to my left and there was a Harry Potter Room. I walked through it and into a narrow tunnel that was flanked by small stuffed animals. Beyond that I found a train room. To the left was a book room. To the right was a Lego room. As I walked from room to room, I realized the store was huge. The second floor of FAO Schwartz took up the entire second floor of the building that I was in. It was deceptive because it was broken into so many small themed rooms that I didn’t realize how large the store was.

Finally, I came upon a sign that said “Big Piano”. I walked into the room and there was the piano that Tom Hanks danced upon in the movie Big. Little kids were dancing on it and having a blast.

I continued through the store and moved from a Hot Wheels room into the Barbie room and into a doll nursery. Two employees were dressed as nurses and carrying around dolls. A wall separated customers from a group of “newborn” dolls that were in their hospital cribs. I then found a room where you could build a doll, choosing the dolls skin color, hair color, hair length, hair style and body size. I thought that Aspen would love something like this.

On my way out I saw that there was small park across the street so I walked that way. (Central Park was just to my left.) I walked past the small park and saw that I was standing in front of the Plaza hotel. My only knowledge of the hotel is that it has been used in numerous movies. It wasn’t very impressive looking with congested traffic around it and scaffolding on it’s side while repairs were being done to it.

That night we decided to see the World Trade Center. We did a little research and found that during the evening there wasn’t going to be a good area to view it, but decided to go anyway. There was a restaurant nearby, so we decided we’d have dinner there. We hopped on the subway and rode it back into New York. Little did we know that the subway was the best way to see the World Trade Center. We were chatting on the subway (a good way to show you’re a tourist because nobody talks on the subway) when suddenly the tunnel walls disappeared and we were looking out into the bowl of the World Trade Center. We could see the construction cranes, the footings of new buildings, the slurry walls and the bridge that leads from street level to the bowl. Our subway moved through the bowl and was proceeding under the bridge when the tunnel wall reappeared ending our view. During those few seconds the subway with its few passengers had gone silent and reverent.

We exited the subway into the new, beautiful and cavernous World Trade Center subway station. It was obviously made to move thousands of people very quickly through it. On street level, we found our street and proceeded to head to our dinner spot. The bowl was completely surrounded by fencing and the fencing had netting that prevented us from seeing in.

After a few wrong turns we found O’Hara’s Pub & Restaurant. We walked into a loud bar, and I wasn’t sure where to go. The bartender looked at me and said something. I couldn’t hear him but could tell that he saw we weren’t locals and was asking if we were here for the restaurant. I nodded and he directed us around the bar to a lower level where we had a seat. We could tell this was a place for locals to catch a drink at the bar before heading home and not a regular restaurant place, because we were the only people who were eating. The rest were at the bar watching the Mets game; they were in a race to get into the playoffs and the Yankees had already been eliminated. One guy at the bar was particularly loud and half the words he used were… um… “sentence enhancers” as Sponge Bob would say or “adjectives” as I have heard a New York comedian say: “I’m just standing there and who runs into me? F’ing Joe Biden. Just standing there and he F’ing runs into me.” (I’m censoring this for you.) Rick and I both laughed at what felt like an either quintessential or stereotypical New Yorker.

After taking the subway back to Jersey City we stopped into the local Target and got Ben & Jerry’s ice cream as a dessert (Stephen Colbert’s AmeriCone Dream) and I picked up a vertically-striped shirt. I had noticed many men on the subway wearing vertically-striped shirts and I was feeling like I didn’t fit in, so when in Rome…

The next day of the conference, we took our lunch break to run down to Times Square. Neither of us had seen it before. I was struck by how much smaller it looks in person. When you see it on TV, the streets are often empty of people and cars and the camera angles are shot from one side of the street toward the other, so you never see that behind the camera there is a building. But when you’re there in person and can see both sides of the street with building on either side and people and cars everywhere, Time Square looks much smaller. However, there are many more billboards and signs than you see on TV. The entrances for many of the Broadway shows were smaller than I expected as well. They would have huge billboards everywhere and then small entrances to the theaters.

We ate lunch at one of 3 McDonald’s in Times Square and then looked around some more. Rick looked at me as we were walking and asked where my bag was. I had been carrying a bag around with me, but I had left in in McDonald’s. I did a quick mental inventory; did I need to go back and get it? Free books from the conference (those can be replaced) and iPod (I want that). So I walked back to the McDonald’s while Rick moved on to check out a large comic book shop we had seen. I found my bag right where I left it, but when I checked the contents the books where there, but the iPod was gone. I got jacked in New York City!

We headed back to the subway, but found that Times Square is where all the train lines meet and we had to walk a labyrinth of criss-crossing lines to find the one that would take us back to our conference. Rick found the right train and we boarded. As soon as we had, a quintet of gentleman began to sing 50’s songs. They were really good and they walked down the length of the train singing and asking for money. I thought that was pretty inventive because for $2 a person, you can ride the trains all day and probably make a good bit of change.

The last adventure we had while in New York was trying to leave. I knew New York airports were notorious for being late to depart, but when it rains, it is even worse. When we arrived at the airport there was a 15-minute delay. A few minutes later, they announced a 3-hour delay. We eventually got home that day, but I’m glad that I won’t be traveling again for a while.