As you know, we are currently in New York City right now, working remotely as we are handling some business and vacation. We’re also here so we can, you know, judge New York City versus Los Angeles. (Not really.) (But really.) Our first day was a bit of a whirlwind, jetlag somehow creeping up on us and killing lots of time. How do people handle themselves traveling from coast to coast?

I haven’t been to New York City in three years. My family is from the city (ahem *Jersey City* ahem) and it’s very familiar to me yet still alien. Our trip was a long, long trek, longer than I remembered. We had a 4:30PM flight on Wednesday which landed us in the city at 1AM. By what magic did that make us get in so late? The cruel three hour time change that I always forget is a silent killer. We ended up rolling to our hotel by 2AM, starving as we hadn’t eaten since 2PM-ish in Los Angeles. What did that mean for us? Time to eat at a diner at 3AM! It was a delightfully diner-y late dinner that we practically ate while sleeping. We quickly passed out by 4AM watching Kill Bill 2 in our tiny hotel room.

Having gone to bed so late the night before, we of course were not up as bright and early NYC time as we had hoped. Instead, we were up bright and early for LA time: 11AM EST/8AM PST. In that time, we just sat in our little room and work, work, worked cranking out our LAIY and TFIB content for the day. How long did this take? Until 3PM. SHEESH. Catching a glimpse of the time, we started to hustle our way out of the apartment for fear of bedsores and that we were wasting time in the city. We were out the door by 4PM and decided to trek to Soho.

We took the train which is something so rickey and loud and seemingly unsafe, which you forget after being spoiled by the very nice, climate controlled, quiet Los Angeles Metro: riding the subway in NYC was like riding in a horse and carriage compared to the Metro in Los Angeles. Of course, our city’s metro is not as extensive but I would much rather take quiet and efficient over loud and clunky. Also, I forgot how impossible it is to read the subway maps. How poorly designed! It took ten minutes to figure out that we were looking at a bus map instead of the subway map. Streamline this stuff, guys.

Anyway, in Soho we were starving and wanted to window shop but our appetite eclipsed our visual appetite, landing us at Lure. This was a fantastic, nice seafood place that–really–we need more of in Los Angeles. The quality was fine but concepts like them are far from existent in Los Angeles. Let’s fix this, people! Seafood is certainly a rising trend in the city–but not as plentiful as lots of people would like.

After a very early dinner, we made our way to check out Partners & Spades’ little surf show, after a quick pitstop in The Future Perfect across the street. Two things about this. First, the Partners & Spade show was all about surfing and, you know, Los Angeles by association. It’s so funny being around so many shirt-and-tied men standing around shorts and surfboards. Obviously, they don’t know how to be Southern Californian. I definitely stuck out in dress shorts and a collared shirt but, hey, someone has to rep Los Angeles. The Future Perfect represented something we do not have in Los Angeles: completely thought through retail experiences. We have a lot of nice design stores and such but The Future Perfect was so moody and atmospheric, truly like stepping into a looking glass. This was the one moment I had where I went, “We need this in Los Angeles.”

From here, we made our way to the NYU SKirball to catch The Vimeo Awards. It was a thrilling two hours of video celebrations and funny, remixed audial performances by Reggie Watts and Beardyman, the hosts of the night. We–somehow–were placed in the very front row, where all the winners were passing around us and allowed for Watts to even get in our face at one point and speak with us. It was pretty funny.

The big winners of the ceremony ended up going to Everynone’s Symmetry which is just the absolute best video of the festival, hands down. It was very well deserved. The winners included videos from categories such as series, documentary, fashion, music video, and even new category lyrical, among a few others. There were tons of rad judges who selected the videos from awesome Angeleno Geoff McFetridge to Angeleno and Limbo documentary maker and former Vimeo Award winner Eliot Rausch. The ceremony was definitely a hoot and was a great kickoff for the festival that Vimeo was holding Friday and Saturday. If you are in the city, swing by!

After the show, we hung out with Evan and Josh of Cool Hunting and Michael of A Continuous Lean. We even posed with all the other Blogger Boys, a funny clique of Vimeo Award press attendees, for a photo. It’s in the album below, me being the little guy sitting on the floor, whose legs were unfortunately cropped out of the photo as I was sitting very elegantly on the steps to show off my bare, shorted legs. Next time.

We hustled home around elevensomething after the show, trying to figure out if we should go to a bar or what. After all, it was around this time that we remembered that it was Bobby and my two year anniversary…and we had forgotten! We took the train back home and frantically searched for a wine store, ending up happening upon Columbus Circle’s Oak And Steel, who stayed open a minute later to sell us some champagne and rosé. We then scooted home, happily, popping a bottle open at midnight and watching Alien: Resurrection until 3AM.

So much for attempting to catch up on sleep.

New York, I’m Yours Rating? Three sleepy hours out of ten.