Activities that enrich your life more meaningfully than tequila
New York is a social city; cripplingly so at times but inevitable. You’re literally corralled into subway cars like a bunch of sweaty/angry cattle, inundated with strangers from the minute you leave your apartment, and as the name of the game is networking, social behavior is crucial to your career.
This city is waterboarding for an introvert.
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Here’s the bigger glaring issue – most social activities go hand in hand with alcohol. While I would be liar if I said that I don’t love tequila and have the whiskey palette of a 90-year old war veteran, at my ripe-age of 29, I have to say that the next-day-feels from 3 cocktails is debilitating. New York has some of the most creative cocktail bars in the world and most knowledgeable professionals in beers, wines and spirits. However, there are so many strangely curious things to do in the city that, thank goodness, won’t leave you housing nachos at 12pm, waking up with dry mouth at 3pm, and in a fog for the next 24-48 hours. For my favorites:
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Ok, so there is alcohol involved in this one but it’s voluntary. Every Wednesday from 8pm-10:30pm, Drink N’ Draw occurs in Brooklyn’s Bat Haus coworking space. The $10 admission gets you all-you-can-drink Brooklyn Brewery beer and 2.5 hours of drawing time with a professional naked model. You have to bring your own art supplies but the medium is totally your choice and talent ranges from crayon stick figure drawings to breathtaking watercolor renditions. While I never flaunt my art, it’s pretty cool to walk around the room during breaks and see how everyone interprets the same model.
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Oh Brooklyn Brainery – the place that blessed me with the ability to give very-unlicensed fortune telling advice via my Tarot Card Reading Class. The classroom in Prospect Heights hosts casual classes for curious adults about all sorts of things: from Tapestry Weaving to American Sign Language to the History of Scotch Whiskey to Vegetarian Sichuan Cuisine annnnd just about every nook and cranny in between. They range from one evening to a few weeks long and you truly never know who you’ll meet in these classes.
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Anyone who has spent more than ten minutes with me knows I get pretty jazzed about American History. One of my favorite recommendations in this city is always the Tenement Museum. The museum is quite literally a time capsulefrom the 19th and 20th century; it consists of two perfectly preserved tenement building that housed 15,000 working class immigrants from over 20 nations. Since we’re all the legacy of immigrants, it’s one of the important places to visit in the city as it’s an outstanding reminder of the sacrifices of our forefathers.
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The Power of Spoken Word – I’m a horrific public speaker so I deeply respect those who master this skill. This city has such a deep array of options, from the East 92nd Street Y Talk Series, to The Moth, to The Poetry Project. They can range from educational, to motivational, to pure art; however all typically elicit curious conversation.
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Back in January, a few of my closest friends and I went to Beat the Bomb in Brooklyn. How to best describe this would be “Mission Impossible meets Double Dare”. In this amalgam of escape rooms, immersive theater, and 80’s movie endings, your team of three to five people, while wearing hazmat suits and facial protection, must use intelligence, speed, and stealth to defeat high-tech “security systems”and defuse a paint bomb before it explodes. I really don’t think you can or should try to do this under the influence of anything