New York City Thanksgiving 2022

Spent 3 days in New York for the Thanksgiving break. It was mostly a chill trip, so I’m gonna just have 1 blog post for the whole trip (as opposed to splitting it by day).

So I arrived Friday afternoon (4pm), but ended up getting to the hotel (Hyatt Grand Central) at 6pm (I think EWR has the worst traffic getting into the city out of all the airports).

After getting to the hotel, we hit up a pretty classy restaurant in Noho called Vic’s. More info on it can be found here:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2022/11/22/vics/

From there, made some last minute decisions. We decided to go and check out the comedy place, The Stand. Several pretty funny comedians. Like the last New York trip, thought it was pretty good time.

Afterwards we decided to go to Brooklyn to day 1 of TimeWarp. Honestly, from what I remembered, I really enjoyed it. The others have biases against Artbat, so they may have not enjoyed it as much.

For the second day, we decided to have a boozy brunch. Went to this place near midtown called Tara Rose:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2022/11/22/tara-rose/

Definitely would go back to the above place for brunch. Food and vibe was great for a booze brunch.

Afterwards, we tried another bar acrosss the street, but then ended up going to a pregame at Sam’s place.

Don’t fully remember leaving Sam’s place, but we made it to Time Warp for day 2.

On the third day, went to a couple of places in Chinatown. One place was a dive bar to meet a friends friend:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2022/11/22/forgtmenot/

Another place was a pizza joint called Scarr’s pizza:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2022/11/22/scarrs-pizza/

To end the night, we went to another pizza join near flat iron called Joe’s:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2022/11/22/joes-pizza/

Overall, super chill and great trip.

New York City 2022 – Second Trip

Went to New York City for the second time in 2022 in May (first time was in April, but mainly just for seeing Eric Prydz at a club called Nebula (which I would not recommend since it’s like a slightly better version than Pure Lounge), and seeing Ben Bohmer. For the rest of the trip I basically did some of the same things as my 2021 trip with my friend Steven).

Now, onto this trip. I’m gonna highlight several awesome takeaways from this trip…

First is staying near the World Trade Center in the financial district (stayed at the Marriott Downtown). Hotel was ok, but it was definitely walking distance to several things (ie the pier, the World Trade Center, and some eateries).

One restaurant that we went to that was super awesome and close to our hotel is called Skinos. Here is the read:

The one thing I do want to do next time I’m staying in the financial district area is walk along the Pier (starting from there World Trade Center). The pier actually looks super interesting and modern.

One of the main things we did in New York (but isn’t new) was see a DJ called Kaskade at Avant Gardner. (And yes, he played past 4am on Sunday :)).

Before that though we pregamed in a part of Brooklyn called LIC (Long Island Center). It reminded me of mission bay, with all these new luxury apartments.

The next day, we actually did a bunch of things (even if we had a late start at 8pm). First we went to this rooftop bar called Le Bain (in Chelsea / meatpacking district) that was pretty sick. It has a pool!

From the rooftop bar (which was right near the water), we went to something called “Little Island” that is by the Pier, which looked like a modern park floating on a tiny square island.

Then went to Marquee Nightclub. Will say it does remind me of the marquee in Vegas (which I wouldn’t say is my favorite club in Vegas). Also, people there were just meh (in terms of attractiveness).

After, ended up back in Brooklyn to Avant Gardner to see Gareth Emery (although admittedly I remember more of the opener, Aly and Fila, instead of him).

Overall, great trip!