Surprisingly Nice Experience in New York City.

[triton]

On March 25, 2006, I was with yet another field studies class to the florida keys when a 6 hour stopover at Newark Liberty airport was on the itinerary and our instructor planned to take us to New York city. Beforehand, I always thought that New York was the "worst place in the nation." I particularly used to think of New Yorkers as totally rude and selfish and pushing everyone away who wanted to befriend them. I was actually scared of going into New York City out of fear of being pushed away or even arrested for saying "Hi, how are you" to someone. In fact, just as I was about to dose off at Newark airport and to tell my instructor to wake me when it's time to go to Florida, my instructor said "come with us!" And so I did. I did, however ask my instructor, who had been to New York City previously some rather odd questions, like "how close did you get to New York City?" (Been up in the Empire State Building), "How many times did you get in trouble for being friendly/social with someone in New York City?" (Zero), "how many run ins did you have with the New York City Police Department?" (Zero). When we arrived in Manhattan, I was almost immediately greeted with the smell of barbeque in the air. Also, sure enough, the people were nowhere near what I thought they would be; in fact some were downright friendly with me and I even had a couple of nice conversations with 2 people, and in fact, only 1 person was unsociable with me! Times square, by the way, was really brilliant with its neon sign sided buildings and cool architecture. However, one thing that would turn me away from New York City is that bicycles appear to be illegal there.