Maker/Hacker Space Touristing in NYC

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How do I say this without offending a bunch of people and all American TV shows/movies ever? I didn't like NYC. Well, there. That was easy.

Granted, there were factors. The AirBNB I was staying at was in Jersey, and though only 10 minutes from Times Square, it was still a hassle to catch a special bus and pay extra and all the rest. I arrived with a horrible deadly cold caught on the plane and had to go to conference events as soon as I arrived. Difficult, but done. Then I just felt like... NYC is a multicultural, buzzing cosmopolitan city. Exactly like Vancouver. Just bigger and noisier. So I get the allure for people who haven't lived or operated in a big city before, (or in a multicultural one) but for me it was same, same, but different. Noisier, dirtier, and just bigger, making it hard to get from neighborhood to neighborhood. I felt like I should spend one day on Manhattan and one day in part of Brooklyn, etc, and not experience more than one thing at once because it was too big. It was never bad, just not my cup of tea. We had some great times though. The 99u conference was great, really well put together and I met a lot of cool people who I go on with quite well. I walked the high line and had an absolutely incredible dinner with Dzl when he arrived, at a restaurant (The Americano) on the highline, which was beautiful and the food was possibly the best I've ever had, seriously. Then there was a few other food experiences, Vanessa's Dumplings in China Town, where dumpings were 4 for $1 (OMG yay!) and a small detour to a Buddhist temple (beautiful), and a party at MOMA as part of 99u (epic, and yes, I just used the word Epic. But it was). And fulfilling all my Gossip Girl dreams and being upgraded to a suite at the Empire Hotel (oh Chuck Bass, where were you?!) and getting driven around in Uber limousines. (How do I love thee, Uber, I cannot count the ways). So some good stuff.

And then we made the trip our own, and forgot about New York and all its fame, and instead, focused on what we love, visiting and meeting and seeing the spaces of, creative nerdy people. We went to the School for Computational Poetry, and saw their final exhibition, fantastic! A small group of internationals, coming to NYC for a course together, and creating an incredible amount of work in a short time; the infamous NYC Resistor HackerSpace; the newly established and truly wonderful Staten Island MakerSpace where the husband-wife duo running it (sound familiar?) were so kind, and really cool, and we walked in to see a woman gyrating in front of an angle grinder shooting sparks everywhere whilst a white boy rapper rapped for a music video shoot; perfect for a 'renting out the maker space' moment. We rented a car and drove up to MIT Media lab and after frantically emailing everyone, ever, we finally found a wonderful grad student who took us on a tour of the promised land. It, in short, blew our minds, as we expected it to; and showed us how much further we can go. Tons of PhDs all trying to get into one place, who, once there, get offered everything, and are basically being paid to play and explore, and have every opportunity laid out in front of them is quite intimidating. But it's the spirt of much of what we're trying to do in Denmark, and we're not as established, so we still have a lot of freedom to explore various models of working; though now I'm giving rational and excuses. It was cool. Too cool. We spent a night in Boston, got the rental car towed, ate at Cheese Cake Factory, and went to see Artisian's Aslyum, an incredible maker/hacker space which is also FabLab meets nightly workshops and they even have a receptionist. Amazingly well organized and cool.

NYC for me, was a combination of seeing all the maker/hacker spaces, and the awesomeness that was the 99u conference, and then a big city in between where everything seemed familiar, but nothing felt like something I wanted more than a week of. So thanks NYC, but maybe only for business from now on!

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