CD's Midtown Adventure

I know it's hard to believe, but I actually went outside and did something on Sunday.

I'll give you a second to recover from the shock of that sentence.

Anyway, I figured that since it's my last weekend in NYC (for now, at least), I should probably use it for something other than sitting around, so I headed up to Midtown Manhattan to check out Times Square and The NHL Store.

I took some (very low quality) cell phone pictures during the day, and there are quite a few of them, so for the sake of everyone's browsers, I'll continue this in the extended entry.

(DISCLAIMER: You probably won't understand half the jokes/references in this post unless you're a hockey fan)

Obviously, you can't go anywhere if you don't know how to get there, so I printed some subway directions from HopStop and headed out.

This ended up being rather interesting, since they're working on a bunch of tracks this weekend and changed some of the routes. I somehow managed to get on the proper train and transfer to another one without too much trouble, and after a long and boring ride, I emerged from the station at Rockefeller Center to find that The NHL Store was right next to it.

Convenient.

I circled around a couple times to get a feel for it...

...And then I found the front entrance...

...And headed inside to check it out:

At first, I was, as Penguins head coach Michel Therrien would say, kind of disappoint. I expected the store to be bigger and have more eye-catching features. I eventually tracked down some good stuff, though.

However, as you can see in the center of the previous photo, I was immediately kicked in the balls by this:

They could at least put a Pittsburgh Satan jersey next to it or something.

Fortunately, the pain was soon alleviated by a rather large reminder that the Pens still have the best player in the world:

There are a few more of those "larger than life" things throughout the store, such as Alex "watch me shoot puck" Ovechkin...

..."Jumbo" Joe Thornton...

...And Martin "the only reason the Devils keep making the playoffs" Brodeur:

For some reason, despite the fact that he was second in both points and MVP voting, they didn't have a picture of my favorite player, Evgeni Malkin. This just goes toward proving my theory that the league hates him for skipping the 2007 NHL Awards. Or maybe they just didn't want to look biased toward the Penguins. Whatever.

Anyway, the front of the store also features a promotional thingy for the 2009 Winter Classic:

Also featured is the "NHL Chopper." I don't even know:

Note the subway exit right outside. I told you it was convenient.

There's also a board or something with some autographs on it, but I couldn't figure out whose they were because athletes aren't allowed to write legibly:

A bit higher up, there are screens playing NHL Network stuff, as well as a big chunk of hockey sticks:

As they advertise, the store has jerseys from every NHL team lined up around the windows. For example:

I like how they make the Crosby jersey even more desirable by putting it between two that nobody is ever going to buy. Work on actually getting some fans, then you can sell merchandise. One step at a time, Southeast Division.

I hear that the store sells some pretty cool Dany Heatley and Daniel Briere jerseys too, but I couldn't get pictures because they're only visible between October and April.

(Insert rim shot here)

I think I also saw a Chris Osgood jersey, but I accidentally brushed up against it as I walked by, and it crumpled to the floor.

...Anyway...

The other clothing-related items range from cool, old school stuff like this:

...To pointless and retarded crap like this:

Also in the "retarded crap" category:

Although, to be fair, a Rubik's cube is probably more exciting than watching either of those teams play. It would give you something to do after the Devils take a one goal lead.

In the...whatever is the opposite of "retarded crap"...category, they have the Penguins' 10 Greatest Games DVD collection:

Fun fact: I already own this and have watched every game at least once.

Getting back to old school stuff, there's some pretty sweet early NHL equipment on display above the merchandise:

In addition, there's a case of autographed pucks off to one side:

Moving on, check out the entrance to the fitting room:

Despite the Obstructiontown theme, I have to admit that it's kind of cool.

In the back, you can see the booth where Gary Bettman tries to convince the audience that the refs aren't incompetent they air NHL Radio shows:

Finally, they have the actual Stanley Cup on display:

Of course, by "the actual Stanley Cup," I mean "a cheap decoration that kind of looks like the Stanley Cup." Not a huge difference, right?

Incidentally, I have seen the actual Stanley Cup (or possibly the replica cup they put there sometimes) at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, but that was years ago.

So, that's about it for that portion of the adventure. I didn't actually buy anything because there wasn't a whole lot of Pens stuff that interested me. It's not like I really needed anything, since I already have a Malkin jersey, a Malkin t-shirt, a Penguins t-shirt from Fan Appreciation Night, two Mellon Arena White Out t-shirts, a Penguins logo hat, and a Penguins Eastern Conference champions hat, as well as a bunch of posters and pictures, as I pointed out back in June. But it was interesting just to be there and check it out.

On the way out, I took this artistic shot of the building:

I think that picture would look good on the cover of an elementary school social studies textbook.

The next step was to get back home, but in order to do that, I had to go to 42nd Street Station, which is in Times Square. The trip to the general area was uneventful, but I took a picture just for the hell of it:

Soon enough, however, I arrived at Times Square, and things got a little...well, crowded:

After wandering too far and backtracking a bit, I did manage to find the station, and I successfully navigated its labyrinthine passages to locate the proper platform:

At this point, I waited...and waited...and waited...and waited...and waited. You see, I was waiting for the 2 train going downtown on the 7th Avenue express route. A couple of local 2 trains came and went on the track behind me, but I just watched them go by.

What I didn't realize until I took a closer look at some flyers posted around the area was that the 2 is only running locally on weekends for part of this month, but it still hits all the express stops, so I could've gotten on either of the ones that passed by.

Oops.

Anyway, I got on the next one and made it back to Fulton Street without further incident. When I left the station, it was raining a little, which soon led to this:

A bunch of people were gawking at it as if they'd never seen a rainbow before. Also, I heard some guy behind me say that he was going to "go beat the shit out of that leprechaun." Oooookay, dude.

That's about it. I stopped at a Subway and got a sandwich, then headed back to my room and ate it. I didn't take any pictures of that, though.

So...comments? Questions? This post took a really, really long time, especially when you factor in how long it took to upload, download, then re-upload all those photos, so I hope you all enjoyed it.

Later.

Posted by CD on August 4, 2008 01:30 AM | TrackBack
Category: NYC