Top Shelf Stories
In a world that often shuns the uncomfortable, we embrace it with open arms—and open laughs. Our candid narratives around our stories assure you that awkwardness is a shared human experience. Tune in, enjoy the ride, and maybe learn a thing or two.
Top Shelf Stories
Bumped To New York
We trade our flights for $1,000 each, reroute through Detroit, and still make it to New York to surprise a sister on her Brooklyn stoop. Fast walks, faster subways, and a crash course in how to eat, move, and avoid tourist traps without a car.
• volunteer bump offer rising from $600 to $1,000
• quick reroute with checked bag retagged
• Brooklyn surprise reveal and family moments
• Tom’s Restaurant sign and Ghostbusters firehouse
• free Statue of Liberty viewing via Staten Island Ferry
• how density makes car-free living workable
• eye-contact safety and crowd dynamics on subways
• food costs, corner stores, breweries, and late nights
• walking the Brooklyn Bridge and neighborhood shifts
• two-to-five-day strategy to avoid burnout
Top Shelf Stories with Jay, Chris, and Tony.
SPEAKER_02:So I was picking my head, scratching my face, and all of a sudden it started bleeding down my nose. I had no idea what it was, and I thought my cut my finger. But in actuality, it was the uh surgery that my mother gave me on Sunday that went up right. Oh, it's it's you're calling this you're calling this a surgery now? Oh, it was a surgery. It was there were professional tools used. They were there were uh there were my my sister's a nurse, she was there.
SPEAKER_01:The way I interpreted the tool you described, I thought it was a must scene on TV.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Must seen on TV.
SPEAKER_02:It was a little more hefty than one of those. It seemed like it cost a little bit more because I it did have a metal handle. Usually those are made of plastic, but I'm still bleeding now. That's how you know it's working? I don't I don't know. So these guys always tease me about having a ball bearing stuck into my forehead between my eyes. And my mom always complains about it. She's like, you gotta get rid of that. I'm like, who gives a shit?
SPEAKER_00:It's like fucking Russell Crowe dot. You're a married man. It's not like you're out in these streets trying to get pussy. Yeah, I know. Matter of fact, matter of fact, I'm sure your wife would prefer that that baby stays there.
SPEAKER_02:I kind of like it. It takes away from my big nose.
SPEAKER_00:It looks it looks like you got a slightly smaller nose above your.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it takes away from my big fat nose. And they uh she bought it for herself to do on her wrinkles. I don't know exactly what the fuck it's used for. Basically, it's got a like a long little needle at the end, long little, that's and um it zaps you and it like burns your skin, I guess. And um it when they were doing it, it smelled like burnt hair the whole time. And I was like, fuck. Just pluck the hairs first and then do it. So they plucked my hairs after starting like six or seven shocks to me.
SPEAKER_01:And uh it didn't smell as bad, but it still was and now just only just a short few five, four or five days later, you're only bleeding a little. But I are you do you feel like your wrinkles have gone down? Are you getting better looks from the gas station clerk when you buy your Marlboro reds?
SPEAKER_02:Actually, after after I walked out of the gas station today, I saw like two girls look at me and they're like, hey. They're like, what's with that dude's face?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you sure they weren't looking at you because you had blood dripping off the Tibetan and running down.
SPEAKER_02:They thought I was Indian. They had that little red dot above my head. Is that what they are? Right? Indians? Indian? That little paint spot they put on their forehead.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I don't know much about their culture.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. I'm not I'm not a Liberty DeCon comment on that either.
SPEAKER_02:So after we got the first one, they're like, or after I got this one, my mom's like, I think you're gonna need another treatment. Like, fuck you! What the fuck is this? I'm not paying you. I don't know, you know? Sounds like a disaster. It was. And every time uh my whoever my brother or my wife looks at it, she's like, why did you let them do that? Like they already started, it can't stop once they start it stinks.
SPEAKER_00:You should have had them, because it sounds like it removes hair also. You should have had them work on your cheeks a little. Dude, I you think I want this fucking scar and shit happening all around my face? Well, your beard's starting to connect to your eyebrows. That's called a tall.
SPEAKER_02:This has been like 12 hours, shave. No, this has been like this has been like five days. But yours is like not not even there. Yep. Don't grow. You don't have any hair in your cheeks. Nope. I got hair poking me in the eye. It's ridiculous. Like what the fuck? If I look a certain way, I'm like, oh shit, I got a fucking hair in my eyeball. It hurts. Yeah, I know. I I can imagine. Do you shave at a certain line at your beard? Or is it all just grows that way? What do you mean? The top part above your by your mustache. No, I clean it.
SPEAKER_01:This has gotta be riveting for the radio. I know. That's yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, why don't we start over with a new one?
SPEAKER_02:It's okay, let's go right now. Boom. Yeah. When's the last time you went to the dentist? I'm just kidding, I'm joking.
SPEAKER_01:So I went to New York City to visit my sister. How long ago? Time is irrelevant. Okay. A couple weekends ago. We obviously we flew there. It was four of us. And our flight was leaving at like Your your wife wasn't there. It was me, my dad, Amy, which is his girlfriend, wife, life partner, whatever, and my brother. So it was four of us. Right. It wasn't his wife wasn't there.
SPEAKER_02:No spouses allowed. No spouses. But your wife's spouse, or your your brother's wife was there.
SPEAKER_01:No. My dad's girlfriend. Okay. They're not really married, so but it was a really good idea. It was a birthday gift from Amy to me, my brother, my dad, and Julia, or whatever. Just she just wanted to do it. So she like paid for everything. But they paid for everything with like credit card points. Flights, hotels. Is it your dad that's got all these points? Yeah, they both do. Everywhere they they kind of make a hustle out of scamming the credit cards.
SPEAKER_02:No, your dad is good at your dad is good at money. He's good with money, I should say. He's good at saving it, good at spending it, not too much.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:Damn, Jay, how close are you guys? Uh on a weekly basis, he calls me, gives me some uh financial advice. Try taking it.
SPEAKER_01:It's uh Friday morning. We're leaving. We have to be the airport by like six, maybe even earlier. So my dad came and got me at like five in the morning or something. And I'm ready to go. Like I was excited for this. I didn't stay up late the night before. I went to bed early. It was all packed like Tuesday. Yeah, your wife's trying to spend some time with you.
SPEAKER_00:You're like, shut up, bitch. I gotta fucking sleep. Unpack it. Get away.
SPEAKER_01:So we get I get picked up and I jump in the car. I'm like, what's up, everybody? And they're all like, they're all hung over. They went out drinking the night before. Amy's so drunk or hung over still or sick or whatever. She threw up in the fucking parking lot when we parked the car. We got on the car bus thing to the airport, and she's just sitting there going, Oh my god. She's white as a ghost. Go through the check-in and all that crap. We sit down. As soon as we sit down in the chair, she's like, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. So she goes into the bathroom, she's gone for like 20 minutes. Like, where the fuck is she, right? Obviously a number two type situation. Throwing up, I think. Ooh, a number two done. She's donezo.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, it's hard to poop and vomit at the same time, but yeah, I seen it happen.
SPEAKER_01:So it's done it a bunch of times. We show up, and over the my brother's like, man, Amy, I bet you we wish that they offer four seats and we four seats to give up our seats and we can go on a later flight or something. She's like, fuck my God. Just give us some of your so we're all like, no way that's gonna happen. There's four of us, like we're not gonna leave one of us stranded. I'm like, I don't know, you give us some money, I might switch up, right? You know, meet me, meet you there. Show up at the fucking gate, ding, attention passengers, testing passengers. We're looking for four people to bump into a later flight heading into New York. We're offering six hundred dollars for each person who volunteers their ticket. And we're like, oh my god, that's okay, that's wild. But I'm like, no. Someone heard you talking. I'm like, nah, dude, I took off work, I'm a plan for this, let's just get on the fucking plane and get there. Before we know it, we're only going for four days. Before we know it's gonna be fucking Saturday by the time we get there. Attention passengers, attention passengers, we're looking, we're still looking for four people to give up their seats. We're offering eight hundred dollars each person. We're like, oh man, eight hundred bucks a pop. These flights are free. Like, we didn't even pay for them, they're just points. Like, you know, that you use your points, you don't get them back, but like, didn't cost any money. Do they give you cash or do they give you like a traveler's check kind of thing, or what the fuck they give you? Well, we don't know if Chris took it. Yeah, well, I'm just attention, passengers. It's like 20 minutes to boarding. Amy's been in the bathroom the whole time. The only time she's ever by us, she's like asleep in her chair, going, uh like she's dead. Like gone. So bad that some stranger in the airport brought her a seven dollar water from the airport store and gave it to her. She kept asking your dad, and he's like, I don't have enough points. No, he didn't, she was refusing anything we offered her, but the stranger she took this water. So, anyways. Well, that's why you always take stuff from strangers. Attention passengers, we are offering for anyone who will give up their seat. We need four passengers to do so. One thousand dollars each. And I my dad, I've never seen I haven't seen him move this fast since I mean it's only two hundred more than the the the first the second button. It's times four, it's eight hundred dollars.
SPEAKER_02:Well, yeah, no, I got that, but he's he doesn't get all the eight hundred.
SPEAKER_01:You guys get your own thousand. Same fucking hotel for the weekend.
SPEAKER_02:Round up to the nearest dollar, sounds so much better.
SPEAKER_01:He goes up there and they're like, Yeah, we're gonna bump you uh if you take the option, and we're already thinking, like, we paid for it with points. Like, they're not bumping the guy who's trying to get to a business meeting who paid fucking$1,200 for his fucking seat. They're gonna bump the people who are on like we didn't even get seat numbers until we showed up. Like, if we didn't show up late enough, we would have been the if we wouldn't have shown up early enough, we would have been the four people waiting for seats. So sure as shitty goes up and they're like, yeah, instead of leaving now and getting in at 11, you'd get in at like four. And he's like, nah, fuck that. That's a whole day. Fuck that, we're not doing it. And he's like, but wait, there's a lot of airports in New York. What else you got? So they're like, well, actually, if you leave in like the our flight was leaving in like 15 minutes, 20 minutes, but there was another flight leaving in like a half of an hour, but it had a stop in Detroit for an hour, and then you end up in a different airport than you had planned on arriving in, but you're only gonna arrive in New York like two hours, hour and a half after you would have, anyways. So we got a thousand dollars each in a gift card, a visa gift card. So I have it hooked up to anything I pay online for fucking hour and a half. Oh dude. So we went into the airport in de in Detroit. Got a they moved our bags too. My dad had a checked bag. They fucking my dad's like, there's no way you're gonna get our bag, though. And he's like, No, hold on, let me radio it up. And we watched the little guy run out there and grab the bag off the little corral and he put it on this other cart, and he's like, Yep, your bag's been checked in for this flight, along with ya. Yeah, dude, we went to New York. We flew in, it was all good. So did you meet the Wu-Tang clan? So it was close. Like, like Yeah, did you see anybody famous? There's a lot of famous people in New York, right? And there's also a lot of people, and there's also a lot of people who look like a lot of famous people. So it's possible saw the Wu Tang clan, but I don't think so, dude.
SPEAKER_02:No, but did you really see anyone famous?
SPEAKER_01:Uh no. Why would I see someone famous?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, that's the first thing someone from our area, Wisconsin or somewhere that's not popular, asks. Did you see anybody famous?
SPEAKER_01:Like, like they're like waiting at the end of the subway routes, like hey, welcome to New York.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I did I did see on Facebook that uh you guys went to a particular diner that was on the opening credits of a very famous TV show.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, we had a lot of plans. So it was four days. Friday, we arrived in Saturday, Sunday, we flew home on Monday, like in the in the evening. Um we went to surprise my sister. She had no idea. Her boyfriend that she lives there with knew and kept her at bay for like a fucking month and didn't and was all ready for it. So we showed up, she was still at work, we're sitting on her stoop with a six-pack drink of beer. She's walking up the way finally, coming home from work. My mom back in Milwaukee's sending us messages because she's tracking her phone of where she's at. Like, oh, she's on the corner of this, she's at this, she's at this store.
SPEAKER_00:Why does your mom got a tracker?
SPEAKER_01:Because she lives in her little sweet little daughter, lives in New York City now, and so she wants to make sure everything it worked out once. She lost her phone once and found it. I get I get it.
SPEAKER_02:I get it, man. You sympathize? I get it, because I'm being tracked everywhere. Yeah. I get tracked in the in the bathroom. We're all being tracked.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, we show up and she can't see very well. She's legally blind as well, just like my brother. Really? So she can't see so well. So she's walking up, and we see her, but she can't she can't like define a face. Like she can see shapes, body, whatever, and the whole thing, but it you gotta get pretty close to tell who's who. Yeah, yeah. So she's walking up and she she comes around the corner and she takes like three or four steps up onto the stoop. Now she lives in like this big brick building with like probably 10, 15 units in it. So it could be anybody on the stoop. And then all of a sudden she notices, she's like, Oh my god, you motherfuckers, I can't believe you're here and all this shit, right? She said she thought that we were strangers, that friends, somebody like she could tell who, but she didn't expect us. So yeah, we did that. We had uh I took we walked like fucking 15 miles one day or something, 12 miles, something like this one day. Saw all kinds of shit, but yeah, Tony, we went and saw it was way out of our way, but we had to do it. We went to the Seinfeld restaurant, Tom's restaurant. So was Seinfeld there? Yeah, that was the famous person I saw. Nice. Yeah, yeah. Liar.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah, I don't I uh uh never watched an episode of Seinfeld. If someone hasn't watched Seinfeld, explain this rest is a restaurant you said.
SPEAKER_01:Man, there's okay, for Jay and the three other people who have never watched it.
SPEAKER_02:I hate the fucking sound of the fucking show. Part of the show.
SPEAKER_01:I hate the fucking the actors in the show, and like the in-between times between like scene cuts, and often when they're at that scene, they go into a coffee house. It's like a coffee shop diner.
SPEAKER_02:Is that when they're sitting in booths?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, okay, yeah. And so they show this sign, although obviously that's not where it's actually recorded.
SPEAKER_02:It's just well, that's bullshit then.
SPEAKER_01:Uh my money back. But yeah, so we went and saw it because it's pretty iconic. It looks exactly the same. I don't know how they did that. All right. But it is cool. I've watched Seinfeld since, and I'm like, oh shit, I was there. Like, oh, we went to Central Park, oh shit, I was there in the subway. Oh, did that shit and all that kind of shit? So both you fellas are Seinfeld fans. Most people are, dude. I'm asking both of you, are you Seinfeld fans? Dude, the best thing in New York is that every single block, there's like probably 1,500 to 2,500 people who live on a block. Just think about that for a second. So every block has its own little fucking decent sized little convenience store, decent liquor store, a nice restaurant, and a fucking launder mat. And then you go to the next block and it's like a hair, you know, it's so compact. You can walk like three blocks and see go Asian restaurant to fucking other stuff. Like it's amazing. That's why you don't have to own a car. So so much food there is so good, dude. Everything is so good. Like every other block had its own brewery, dude. They're like this 13th Street brewery. They have 19 different beers, places packed full of people, nothing different, German restaurant. There's like there's like a fucking food truck on every corner just because there's that many people. Like one food truck, 1500 people, you're gonna serve 20 people that night. That's a good job at a food truck, right? You make five bucks on each person, you're making a fucking living. Yeah, but it costs you a shit's crazy, dude. So we took subway rides like crazy. Uh we went sell a Wall Street bowl. All these people standing in line to hold the balls of a brass bowl and have their picture taken by their family. Went to the Ghostbusters. I did see that picture. Fire Firehouse. Never seen it. We walked the Brooklyn Bridge.
SPEAKER_02:Now you yelling at me for now watching Seinfeld. You gotta watch Ghostbusters. Fucking Ghostbusters. I don't think I've seen or heard about anyone not seeing that fucking movie. I knew right away when I saw that, I didn't have to fucking even look at the captions. I knew that was the Ghostbusters fucking.
SPEAKER_01:But I'll tell you this this city's sweet, dude. I'm a big fan.
SPEAKER_00:You thinking about moving?
SPEAKER_01:You no, fuck no, dude. If I was but I'll tell you, if I was there 20 years ago and I went on this trip 20 years ago, I probably would have fucking been like, I'm going there. This is awesome. There's so much to do, and there's always something. So why did your sister move there? So she has a college degree as like a botanist, like trees. She like went to college for trees. That's like the worst place to move.
SPEAKER_00:Simplifying it, but no trees. She can grow them, but she can't.
SPEAKER_01:She worked, she worked here in in different places. She got a job at the university of like Madison or like at the Madison Botanical Gardens, like identifying and putting up signs for plants and taking care of certain areas of the park. And then uh she was her boyfriend, uh, got a job. He's a fed, so he got a job with the feds in the city. She talks the feds? I guess so, dude. So he got this job, it's a pretty nice job, you know, in the city. His sister worked, lives out there. So they went out there, he was working there, and then she was like, I'll get a job here. So she applied for some jobs and she got a job in Central Park. Which can go to New York and get a job in Central Park, like an official uh the most expensive tree. She was a state employee working for the state in the state park or whatever, you know, just picking up trash and whatnot. So it turned into being just her basically like picking up trash and whatnot. Another remedial non-like, hey, I went to school for this shit, but like really I do actually have a job for going to school for trees, so like I'll deal with it.
SPEAKER_00:Cleaning up used rubbers.
SPEAKER_01:They lived in Brooklyn and it was like an hour subway ride, like three or four transfers. It was a big pain in the ass. She didn't make that much money, yada yada yada. So she kept applying for the job she really wanted, which was at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, which happens to be just a short four blocks or some shit from their apartment, and she fucking landed that job, and now she's like the person who's taking care of all of the entrance trees and plantings and what goes where, and like has a really pretty legit like in the world of trees, college people, she's got like it, dude. I always so yeah, that's why she moved out there for work and her boy.
SPEAKER_02:I always think when I see uh the uh pictures of Central Park, I always think that will they ever shrink it just a little bit to make billions of dollars?
SPEAKER_01:No, there apparently there's some fucking thing in place where it won't happen.
SPEAKER_02:You could just take out one tree and you have a hundred thousand dollars of equity in in buildings or something.
SPEAKER_01:Dude, there's anything so many buildings, dude. We were on the Brooklyn Bridge, which from there you can see like all of the islands or the boroughs of New York and all of the fucking buildings on all these fucking little island situations and all this fucking oh my god, it's unbelievable. And we're walking across on this one, and I see this one, and it looks like a fucking burnt out, broken out, all of this is concrete, like it never got built. And I'm like, what the fuck's up with that one? And my dad's like, look at it for a minute, and I look and it's fucking tilting a little. It's this skinny fucking skyscraper, tall as the other ones, but it's fucking tipping over because the ground's not built for a fucking tall enough. He goes, look around. He goes, It's the tallest one on this like strip, and all the other ones are only like five stories, and this one's fucking 73 or some shit, and it's just teetering there. They can't build it, they don't know how to tear it down now, like it's a whole fucking thing. But uh, dude, I encourage anybody to go to New York, at least for a fucking weekend or a fucking two days, and just like I did there, we did a fucking speed run. Subways, we rode it like 40 times, 30 times. You go to every time you pop out of the subway, you pop up, you're in a new fucking area, all new buildings, all new people, all new everything. The ethnicity of the neighborhood can completely change. You can go down there into the subway again, ride it for three minutes, pop out, bam, you're in a no fucking way different area because it travels like four, three, four miles like in a second. Not a second, but you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_02:I feel like you every everywhere you go, you're never alone. No, I feel like that would drive anyone with social anxiety.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know, but nobody gives a fuck what you're doing either. You learn to realize that nobody gives a shit what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02:That's because you have so many people to look at. It's like uh you turn around, you see 15 people, you turn around another half quarter, fuck you see another 20 people. I don't know. I never been there. I can't I can't it was neat. It was neat hard to imagine it. Imagine it.
SPEAKER_01:It'd be neat, it was neat, dude.
SPEAKER_02:You're giving me some kind of a visual.
SPEAKER_01:We went to a bunch of nice restaurants and and you know. And how much is though? Like everything's really expensive, dude.
SPEAKER_02:Like, okay, what was your bill at like a just a normal, like normal restaurant, like nothing too fancy.
SPEAKER_01:Well, like I said, Amy, like, she paid for like everything, but you're looking at like$20 plates, you're looking at like$9 slices of pizza. I mean, it's regular life, but it's New York, it's a little more expensive. Like, I'll tell you, think I'm thinking we went down into like if you're buying shit down by like Times Square and like in the popular areas where people go vacation or you know, visiting it. Food court, right? And you'll pay more for shit around there. But like I mean, beers were really expensive. You go to because there's no like fucking Walmart anywhere, and every corner has a store that's damn near full, like a Walgreens but independently owned little Bob Bob shop. A 12 pack of beer is$13 instead of six.
SPEAKER_02:There's a Walmart the size of a whatever six pack of beer. My kitchen. They'd have to if there was a Walmart, yes, it'd have to be tiny as shit.
SPEAKER_01:So like everything you buy costs more. The world the whole city runs on garbage, basically, too. Like most of the people there seem to just collect cans of other people, it looked like a lot. Like there was no recycling pickup. People just picked it like I'll take your cans. Pretty well.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I don't I don't know that I've ever been less interested to visit a place than I am New York. I kind of thought so too, man, but it's cool, dude. My my kid almost got me to go last year. What do you mean your kid almost got you to go? He begged me and to go to New York.
SPEAKER_02:You want to see the trees?
SPEAKER_00:You want to see it? They did some bullshit in his, I don't know, like no offense or anything, because I know your wife's deeply rooted in it, but the school system's just fucking stupid. It's fucked. It's so dumb. Like they should be teaching him about something super important, but they spent the whole year talking about immigration. It's pretty fucked.
SPEAKER_01:Sounds like indoctrination, that's cool.
SPEAKER_00:So uh you know, all he wanted to do all year was go see Ellis Island.
SPEAKER_01:I I got a story about that, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's that's all he wanted to do, and I almost took him just to shut him up. But I I am not it's so so you guys have both been to my house. So I live I live on uh what's called a cul-de-sac, and uh there's like 11 houses in my neighborhood, and I'm under I'm under the impression that that's too many houses. Yeah, there's there's too many houses in my neighborhood. I think we need to get rid of some.
SPEAKER_01:I get that. I want to be around less people. I get it. I don't think it's somewhere I noticed something when I was there. There were not very many people. Like I was old. In the like walking through the city, riding the subway, going in and out of restaurants and stuff. I was old. Like 42 was old. Most people were in their 30s hanging out around.
SPEAKER_02:Let me ask you this. Um, like a kid would walk down to the convenience store. Were their kids like eight, nine taking the subway? Yeah. Really? They were subscribed.
SPEAKER_01:Like, I don't know about eight, nine, but uh, there was like 10 to 15 year old kids.
SPEAKER_02:You know, so without parents?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's crazy.
SPEAKER_01:Because it's like a walk down, like go down, take the subway three stops. That's totally different than when we pop up, grab something from the store and get back on the subway and go back three boxes.
SPEAKER_02:It's funny, someone somebody listening in New York is probably like, Jesus, this is normal fucking life.
SPEAKER_01:But it, I mean, still, I don't know. I don't know. I didn't experience enough to know like if that's all that's I'm terrified when my kids walk across the street and go to Quick Trip. Right. I can't imagine taking a subway 16 blocks and a but that's because where we are, there's no one to see bad things happen. But when you're in New York, there's so many fucking people, you can't just do bad things, someone will stop you. Like it's like power to the people. There's more good than bad. And so that's it.
SPEAKER_02:So you're saying the good overwhelms the bad. If there is bad, there's 25 other people that are gonna stop that bad system.
SPEAKER_01:It kind of seems that way. Like somebody came on, somebody came on the train and you could tell that they were gonna do a performance or try to bag or do something. You could tell, and everyone that knew that looked at each other on the train, and we all kind of made this like all right, if this gets out of hand, everyone who made eye contact is in on this. We're gonna fix this problem if there's a problem. Like I could tell there was like not of the 20 people on the train, there were probably like nine or ten people who were with me that if there was a problem, we were gonna make eye contact together.
SPEAKER_00:So you're saying the city is basically 25% beggars and criminals, 75% vigilantes.
SPEAKER_01:Kinda. Well, not even, yeah, yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_00:Nice.
SPEAKER_01:But okay, so the Staten Island, right? You want to see not Staten Island, but you want to see Ellis Island. You want to see Statue of Liberty.
SPEAKER_00:I don't want to see Ellis Island.
SPEAKER_01:Everyone who goes to New York wants to. And there's this scam where all these people, there's like this way you get down to where all the ferries are and all the boats that take you there. And it's like through this park, and it's really nice in a state park or city park or whatever. You walk through it and it's all good. But there's these people that look like they're working at the fucking Walmart, and they're like, sir, you need ticket, you need ticket, you need ticket, you need ticket, and they're trying to sell you packages or coupons or tickets, and we're like, dude, you're not it. I don't want your shit. But then, like, there's another wave of them, a couple more blocks down this like park, and then there's more of them, and then there starts to be signs. Do not buy from these people, it is a complete scam, right? You can't buy tickets here. But so there's this free way to see the Statue of Liberty because the boats can only take you so close to it, like, and you can go onto it and take a tour, that's even more money, but you pay a bunch of money to do it, or you could take the free public transit ferry that goes from New York City to Staten Island and it runs right past the same boats and the same boating channels as so everyone knows this.
SPEAKER_02:I thought you could walk into the statue of it.
SPEAKER_01:You can if you take a special tour to do that, sure. But if you just want to see it, you go all the way to the picture, you can, I think, yeah. The flame. I believe you can. But so all these people get on this free transport to do this. So there's like a thousand people, and probably of them, like 80 of them are actually taking it to get back and forth from Staten Island just because. So you take this boat, you get on it, it's free. You get you all mule onto the thing, you ride it, you can see the thing, but everyone as they get on, they all get on the one side of the boat that they're gonna see everything, and no one's on the other side. And then on the way back, you land at the other end, and there's a boat on the dock. And if you run, you can run from this ferry that just landed to the other ferry and take it right back. So there's half the people from that half the people again are running to go. We kind of wanted to make it too, but we didn't. So we ended up having and staying in the Staten Island for uh uh one twenty-five minutes or something. But yeah, man, trip to New York, dude. Surprise my sister. We made a thousand dollars doing the trip.
SPEAKER_02:That's amazing. That's the best part of the trip.
SPEAKER_01:Like I I yeah, it's pretty legit. Like, I haven't had to buy anything in a whole week and a half since I've been there because I've just been using this thousand dollar card that they like out of here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, right. You spent that in one day.
SPEAKER_01:No, dude, I bought our dinner with it tonight. 26 bucks here, 13 bucks here, lunch here, you know what? Vape here, whatever, and that's all I've been using. You are better with money than I am.
SPEAKER_02:I would have walked one. I would have walked one block. That card would have been cut in half because it would have been gone.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Gone. I would have bought every fucking thing somewhere.
SPEAKER_01:It's not about buying a TV, but I don't I don't need it, so I didn't. What's a thousand dollars? Just buy it.
SPEAKER_00:Jay gets money in his pocket, he's asking strangers. What size? Hey man, you need some Twizzlers. I got this, I got this come up. What size TV, Chris? I'm not buying one.
SPEAKER_01:Don't try to reignite my excitement for this new television.
SPEAKER_00:Jay's getting paid on a job tomorrow. He'll buy it for you.
SPEAKER_02:Alright, I'll tell you right now, the biggest thing you have to look at is the Hertz. Okay. 60, don't even look at it. You don't even know about Hertz. 120, maybe. 240 is where you're at. Alright, well, you know what? I'm an engineer, guys. You are. I run the program. I run the program. I can't speak clearly. Custodial, maybe. I can't speak clearly, but I can run the podcast. That's all that matters. Oh, Chris is taking a phone call. Right in the middle of the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:I'm still doing hood rat stuff with my friends, but you're not on the podcast. Sorry. Hook took to Bluetooth and she would have been. See, they do talk to each other. They always make fun of me, Kate, because they say we never go on vacation together.
SPEAKER_02:Well, she wasn't in the music.
SPEAKER_01:Or that I always travel.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, she's gonna listen to this episode and she's gonna be like, hey, now I know what he did.
SPEAKER_01:I'll tell him about it. It'll come up.
SPEAKER_02:Last night there was a wedding. So Tony, um, why don't you change your fucking clothes? Oh my god. We're clothes. Dirty. Okay. How come your shirt's clean but your pants are dirty? You wear like six shirts? No. Then explain. So uh New York. Uh how do you how do you want to sum that up?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, not with that call to my wife trying to interrupt me. She wants, she said, we're fostering a dog. I gotta go. Get me the fuck out of here. Alright. So New York is cool as shit. I had a blast. If you can go there, I suggest two to five days max. Five would probably be too much. Try to try to have one day where you're more chill, because otherwise you want to go see everything and you can't see everything.
SPEAKER_02:You'll have to let me ask you this real quick. Do you think it's a place to bring your family, kids, young kids? Sure, why not? Why didn't you bring it?
SPEAKER_01:A lot of the time that we were there, uh like walking around and stuff, you're going through like parks and checking out monuments and sculptures and whatever. Uh I was invited on this trip.
SPEAKER_02:All right, so everyone that doesn't live in New York, that hasn't been to New York, this is a ploy to go to New York. I don't know, it's cool. Brooklyn was cool, city was cool. No, I things are open till things are open late. There's always something to do, always places to check out. The next time I'm flying somewhere, I think the first thing I'm gonna think about is I'm gonna wait for that announcement and see if anyone's giving give me money to wait for the next flight because that is actually the amazing.
SPEAKER_01:We almost got beat to the punch, too. Some other guy was gonna try to take it out. But there was only two of them. There was only two of the people, so they're like, We're gonna my dad was like, Well, I'm only gonna do it if it's all five.
SPEAKER_02:I like you guys, I like how you guys were like, all right, we'll do it. I like how you guys did the prices right kind of shit. This waited until it got really high.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we weren't tempted at really, we were all just like, let's just fucking go. Like just get there. Because these have had these we've done this. My dad is we've done this, and sometimes they're like, Oh yeah, we'll get you on a flight in a half an hour, and then your flight leaves, and they're like, Oh shit, we can't get you on that flight, it's not gonna leave until tomorrow. I guess they're like, Well, I don't want fucking that, and they're like, Well, we did give you a thousand dollars. And they're like, Well, I don't fucking give me more, and they're like, Nah, we don't really want to hotel room. I'm gonna say we gave you a thousand dollars, like that's it, and then you're stuck there, and you got what you got, and you don't what are you gonna do? I'm assuming you gotta sign something. They it's so weird. They gave us because they don't have printers and paper. They gave us our like document that says thank you for this, and like here's the agreement, and this is what you're getting, and this is what we're giving up. You're not getting a seat, but you're gonna get this money in conversation. You agree not to sue, and all this other legal mumbo jumbo, except for it's on like 16 tickets printed out. Because that's what the printers they have. Oh, gotcha. So I got this thing, it's fucking 11 inches wide by three and a half inches tall times 16 sheets deep that I had to read and like verify all my shit and sign it. And then they just emailed me coupon code. It was kind of weird. Coupon code to pick gift cards. You have a thousand dollars to buy gift cards with. So I just bought a Visa card because I didn't want to do that.
SPEAKER_02:But you had to pay the five percent.
SPEAKER_01:No, nothing.
SPEAKER_02:Really? Yeah, wow, they really hooked you up.
SPEAKER_01:It was from like their their like store.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Beautiful. So he can't finish the New York story.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I thought we were done talking. I'm in the middle of a podcast here. I don't want to talk about a dog. I said goodbye. I thought you hung up on me. You forgot to say I love you. Oh well, sorry. Thanks for calling. We'll talk about it when I get home. I love you. Is that better?
SPEAKER_02:Tell her to work on her voice for the for the intro.
SPEAKER_01:Huh? Yeah, you think you're I'm not gonna add this out. I'm leaving.
SPEAKER_02:I'm fucking leaving this part, too. I'm not adding shit out. You gotta edit this out. No, I'm leaving it. It's terrible. Fucking leaving it. That's fucking terrible.
SPEAKER_00:You only had one side of the conversation to boot. Fucking leaving it. We're gonna lose both our subscribers if you leave that in. That's fine. We'll get new ones. Uh yeah, so anyway, fuck New York.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I don't know. It was neat. But that's it. I went to the best fucking Thai food I've had in a really long time. Some bomb donuts.
SPEAKER_02:New York, New York.
SPEAKER_01:I did have a piece of pizza that was the size of my fucking torso. It's pretty fucking legit.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, was it in the shape of a torso?
SPEAKER_00:No. Was it from a place called Sal's? No. I forget what it was called.
SPEAKER_02:You know, I feel like we were talking longer than this. It was only 36 minutes.
SPEAKER_00:Shit. Alright, peace out, fucker. Fucking 13 of it was phone calls.
