I SPY: New York Hidden Treasures

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^ this is one of the happier I Spy images but remember how dark these could get….

There’s a special place in hell for people who circle the items in I Spy.

Let us take a quick trip back to a memory most should have: when you were 6 years old and decided to throw up your scrambled eggs during breakfast so you didn’t have to take your spelling test that afternoon, your parents had to take off work to bring you to the pediatrician’s office which was always a total shit-show, and to kill time in the waiting room, you were trying to find a thimble somewhere in the two page spread that can best be described as a demonic assortment of surgical tools from SAW and the accessories from a RuPaul’s Drag Race. ^ feel free to borrow this childhood trauma to explain your disturbing Google search history

We won’t talk about how our parents are literal heroes for not absolutely losing their minds every time we ruined their day with a “stomach” ache, but instead we’ll revisit the power of I Spy. Best known as the literary form of adderall, it had a spell binding effect on even the most violently energetic children. But its long standing message is that even in the most grim, seemingly boring (tell me what’s sexy about an assortment of button) situations, there’s always weird stuff to find…you just have to look. Because I have the attention of a squirrel whose on a steady IV drip of Mountain Dew, I make my life into a glorified scavenger hunt so here are a few things in New York that so you should also hunt for:

I Spy…Mmuseumm, New York’s tiniest museum that fits 3 people at a time and is built into an elevator shaft in TriBeCa. It specializes in “overlooked, dismissed, or ignored” objects.

I Spy…the Wishbones of McSorely’s Old Ale House. Hanging in the oldest (and one my favorite) bars in New York, you’ll see a dozen dust covered wishbones. McSorely’s started the tradition of giving wishbones to soldiers heading to the front of WW1 for good luck with the intention of their being reclaimed after a safe return. The wishbones that remain to this day are from soldiers who sadly never made it back.
I Spy…a Whispering Arch on the lower terminal of Grand Central outside the Oyster Bar. Here you and a friend stand at opposite sides of the underpass and while one of you speaks into the wall at a normal volume, the person on the other side hears you perfectly even though you’re 30 feet away and facing in the opposite direction.
I Spy...a 3,500 year old obelisk from Ancient Egypt chilling in Central Park. 
Clocking in at 70 feet tall and 220 tons, it was erected in 1350 BC towering at the head of the Nile, was once stolen for Julius Caesar, and through a lot of weird drama, made its way to the US over the course of a 2 year journey culminating in 1880. It took a team of 32 horses to pull it uptown at the rate of one block a day. There are huge efforts to restore the artifact and hopefully renew the public appreciation of the piece. Side note: the crabs at the base are an interesting story.
I Spy…The Bushwick Collective, New York’s most prolific swath of street art and graffiti. The collection was started in 1991 by a local artist looking for a way to cope with the tragic murder of his father. The site has exploded and art is constantly rotating and growing, but the level of creativity and true talent remains premiere. It’s also a short walk from the famous Roberta’s pizza and two of my favorite bars in the area, The Johnson’sand Lot 45.
I Spy…an old millionaire’s private bowling alley. So this is the hardest thing in NYC to get access to – I’ve sent the museum coordinator a few too many emails and I keep getting “No.” The original owner of the estate, Henry Clay Frick, commissioned this in 1916; it is truly gorgeous and I will go here before I die so help me god.