So I set my fast food efforts on a new endeavor, Chipotle. But wait, guacamole is $3.75? I can’t even get a burrito bowl for less than eleven dollars now! So I went to a place I knew I could never go hungry, Olive Garden. Even if everything was two dollars more on the menu, I still got unlimited soup and salad! (Plus all of my friends thought it was really entertaining to go to the Times Square Olive Garden and talk in British accents and pretend we were tourists)
....I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you right. YOU CHARGE FOR EACH EXTRA SALAD AND BREADSTICKS?! That is un-American.
After that unfortunate experience I decided to go on a strict diet of Marlboro lights and Coke Zero because I obviously could not afford food. I’m really not sure why so many people in New York smoke. Sure, its a stressful place and nicotine does help to take the edge off, but cigarettes are roughly thirteen dollars a pack. That’s almost three times as much as what they cost in Virginia. I was ready to stock up while I was home and set up a cigarette and lemonade stand outside of NYU as my after-school job. That could easily become a six figure salary if what I was learning in Economics about price competition was correct. Since my luck was going oh so well, Mayor Bloomberg also decided to ban extra large sodas around this time in an effort to curb obesity.
“NEW YORKERS, YOU HAVE TO WALK EVERYWHERE YOU GO AND FOOD IS UNGODLY EXPENSIVE, WHY ARE YOU OBESE?!”
So at this point I had no food, cigarettes, or large caffeinated beverages. And you all wonder why I came home.
"NYC Go." Discover America. NYC & Company, Inc., 2012. Web. 19 Sep 2012. http://www.nycgo.com/articles/nyc-statistics-page
"NYC Go." Discover America. NYC & Company, Inc., 2012. Web. 19 Sep 2012. http://www.nycgo.com/articles/nyc-statistics-page
I LOVE this post. You showed how expensive everything was without boring the reader with endless dollar figures! Excellent job. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteP.S Camel Blues are much better than Marlboro lights.
You're on the cusp of a great, supercharged post here. We see why you came home (it was expensive, of course), but how did you survive while you were there? You have a lot of great details about what was too expensive, but what was affordable? In your other post, you mention that you took a cab (wildly expensive, right?). Did you ride the subway often instead? What food could you get for a decent price? Anything? And did McDonalds have foot-longs? I don't know if you meant that or a hot dog cart....
ReplyDeleteThink also about formatting. These posts look to be in all bold, and on the web, it helps to have a bit of space between each paragraph for ease of reading (see some of the online blogs in the case studies, or even a news website like CNN. Formatting on the web is a lot like formatting a business letter. Single spaced, then one extra return between paragraphs. Finally--when you want to emphasize, use italics. It's more clear than all caps and overpunctuation, which can confuse (e.g., is the writer yelling, or was that a mis-click on the keyboard?).