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If there is one thing I’ve learned about New Yorkers, its that they want to get the hell out of New York. Maybe not forever, but with sunny beaches just a couple of hours away in New Jersey and the Hamptons, who among us can resist the urge to pack up and roll out to the suburbs for a weekend or two? Not I of course!

Going Down
People often say that there’s nothing better than having a beach house, except for having a friend with one. In my case, it’s my uncle who resides on Long Beach Island in New Jersey who provided me with a much needed place to crash for the weekend. So I headed up to the bus station and grabbed a ticket. The bus ride is $31 round trip and takes about 1.5 hours each way, but to go the distance you really need a car. Fortunately I got picked up from the bus station by my uncle and an hour later we were on the Island!

Having Fun on the Island
There are lots of ways to have fun on LBI, but the most obvious one is right in the name, the beach. The island is approximately 18 miles long, and almost every inch of the sea side is covered in sandy beaches. Lifeguards supervise until 5pm and make you wear a beach badge, but after that, it’s all open sand and surf. So go ahead and play paddle ball, take a walk, or a little dip by moonlight if that’s your fancy.

There’s still more on the bay side, with sailing, motor-boating, water-skiing and jet-skiing available for rentals as short as an hour or as long as a full day if you’d like. I wouldn’t recommend bay side swimming however, as the beaches on this side of the island are sometimes slimy with silt and seaweed, and often host considerable numbers of horseshoe crabs.

If the water isn’t really your thing though, the island still has plenty to offer, including a cool little amusement park called Fantasy Island, complete with a giant ferris wheel, bumper cars, funnel cakes and an arcade with skiball (oh yes, it really is the Jersey Shore). Right next door to that is a giant waterslide and an 18 hole mini-golf course, one of many on the island.

How I Spent My Time
Drinking at the Sea Shell Hotel right on the beach, sunbathing and reading on the sea side sands, swimming in the still chilly coastal waters, eating pizza and assorted Italian meats and cheeses, playing shuffle board, and enjoying the company of a beautiful girl.

The Bottom Line
While this was perhaps my best weekend of the entire summer thus far, there are several key barriers to overcome in getting here. First, you need a car to get onto the island, and second, you need a place to stay, and with the booming tourist industry, this will be neither cheap, nor easy unless you already know someone with a place here. If you can manage the trip however, you won’t regret it. Go ahead and splurge (you’ll have to, since the island is somewhat expensive) and enjoy everything LBI has to offer, including great seafood, beaches, bars, and even some good old fashioned family fun.

I recently got turned on to the idea of scavenger hunts in and around some of our fair city’s most fascinating locations. One that stood out, and incidentally has captivated my imagination for quite some time, is entitled Murder at the Met. As the name suggests, the event is based around a (fictional) murder in the Metropolitan Museum, which the guests have to solve by finding clues related to pieces of art in the museum.

The Mystery
Now if you’ve ever been to the Met or at least read my previous post about it, you’ll know that a scavenger hunt involving clues strewn across the museum’s many wings of fabulous art and sculpture is no small task, but that’s not all! Using the sheet of notes provided to get you started, combined with an answer sheet to write down your clues, and a numeric cypher, you have to guess not only the murderer’s identity, but also their motive. All within the time limit of 2 hours.

To get us started, each team was given a clue to start with, along with a guide for getting to the next clue. We were thankfully given the first clue to start with, so our journey was more or less by the numbers. Over the course of our search, we traversed the museum many times over, occasionally having to “be resourceful” about finding clues or rewriting directions when a particular wing of the museum was closed off. I’m proud to say that my team did exceptionally well despite getting totally lost looking for some 18th Century American portraits.

Eventually, we arrived at the Temple of Dendur, a massive hall with the remains of an ancient Egyptian temple, much of it still kept whole despite the long intervening centuries between its construction and subsequent excavation. We still had a few minutes which we used to run through the clues and make our guess about who among the multiple motivated murder suspects was the actual killer. Unfortunately, despite getting nearly every clue correct, we couldn’t figure out the cypher, and finally just guessed at the culprit, though we did manage to parse out the precise motive from the notes and the clues we’d gathered.

The Museum
The Met itself was no less impressive the second time around, and the added aspect of finding clues in the art gives you an excellent means by which to explore and scrutinize many of the museum’s permanent collections. On the downside, you get caught up in the competition and will probably find that you don’t have time during your hunt for clues to linger too long in any one place, so your opportunities for leisurely examination of any particular piece will be limited. If you still have the energy after the hunt ends, however, the price of admission to the museum is included in the cost of the ticket, so you can stay as long as you like to look at other exhibits.

The Bottom Line
Do it! But plan well in advance. The Murder at the Met series occurs several times a month but at times, you may have to book up to a month in advance. Perhaps by luck, when I finally did resolve to go, I was able to book tickets for the event only two weeks ahead of time. The tickets are a bit pricey at around $40 for an adult, $32 for students, but since they include price of admission to the museum, you can get a lot of bang for you buck, plus the event itself is totally worth it. A great way to spend a few hours on Saturday night!

We’d worked up quite an appetite laughing in the park for two hours, and knowing that the famous dessert establishment, Serendipity, was in the area, we thought we’d give it a shot. Unfortunately, there was over a two hour wait. Fortunately, there was a Patsy’s right across the street, and having never tried this particularly renowned slice of New York City, I was naturally obliged to go.

I was definitely not disappointed, but I’m not going to go into as great detail for this pizza because in the end, it was the spitting image of the pizza I got at Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge. The reason for this, I learned, is that the two famous pizza makers are related! Patsy Lancieri, the man for whom the restaurant is named, is apparently Patsy Grimaldi’s Uncle!

The two are so similar that I’m actually just going to refer you to my review of Grimaldi’s if you want to find out what I think of the pizza. The point on which the two differ is really the presentation. Where Grimaldi’s was completely packed to the point of having a line out the door, Patsy’s was calm and it was easy to get a table that we didn’t have to share, literally rubbing elbows with our neighbors. The service at Patsy’s was more along the lines of a good Italian restaurant than a pizzeria, which can definitely be refreshing, and the price was pretty much the same as it would have been anywhere else, so I’m giving Patsy’s a solid 8 in the other category. Very impressive.

After having had my obligatory pizza fill for the night, I decided to indulge my sweet tooth. Since Serendipity wasn’t happening anytime soon, I crossed the street yet again and explored what can only be described as a Wonderland of Sugar. Dylan’s Candy Bar is a two story candy nirvana owned by Ralph Lauren’s daughter, Dylan Lauren. The first floor encompasses both a multitude of candy dispensers and an ice cream bar. The dispensers are filled with every type of candy imaginable, including my personal favorite, chocolate covered gummy bears. So much chocolatey goodness!

I was elated to have found my chocolate covered gummy bears right away, but there was a whole other level worth exploring. The downstairs is also filled with a wide array of candy dispensers, the most prominent being the M&M display with M&Ms in every color of the visual spectrum. Another amazing find was the Wonka Bar, which I had never tried before. I learned that this store had been the epicenter for the promotion of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and it was obvious why. The candy selection was incredibly diverse and pretty much any treat you could possibly want is available, even schnozberries. Just kidding!

Last Friday I decided to lighten things up a bit and check out some more comedy. As luck would have it, I happened upon a very interesting, very comprehensive list of free events in the city, and comedy was on the menu in Central Park, compliments of Comedy Central.

So we headed up to the park after work, hoping to catch the show, but to my surprise, there was actually a massive line that had formed to get in! I had been under the mistaken impression that the performance would be on one of the big lawns and that space would be more or less unlimited, but the show was actually being held in a much smaller (though still quite expansive) amphitheater in the middle of the Park. The line moved quickly however, and we managed to get in right around the start of the show.

Comedy Central (Park)
To my great delight, I found that the show was actually being introduced by Dave Attell! In a word: Awesome!!! Dave Attell was fantastic with a quick round of opening jokes including some very dirty jokes, which he apologized for when he remembered that there might be families in the audience…but not really. Thank god for unabashed adult humor!

Of the acts that followed, all were pretty solid, save one poor woman who just couldn’t seem to get the crowd excited. The jokes weren’t bad, but somehow they weren’t getting through to the crowds funny bone, so she kind of struggled for a while. The other comics, and Dave Attell of course, had a good bead on what tickles a New Yorker’s fancy though, and the show went very well indeed.

The Space
The space was a little cramped, owing to it being a free, public comedy show featuring some very funny and talented comics, but I didn’t mind so much for the most part. The only time when this became a problem was when a group of about eight or nine highly inconsiderate people came and put down a blanket next to us (we were all laying out on some kind of turf) and proceeded to talk amongst themselves loudly through a good portion of the show. How unnerving.

The Bottom Line
It’s hard to go wrong with free in this city, and this was no exception. I was exceptional in that we got to see over two hours of what really was top notch comedy with little more sacrificed than about five minutes in line. I’d definitely recommend any free performance in the park with gusto. There’s really no reason not to go, so check it out.