Living out of a backpack, aka Full Backpack style, is meant to reduce complications and open up more possibilities.  Travel Local guidelines release tourists from the wheelied, neck-pillowed, map-fumbling stereotypes they may be, and allows for city exploration as a visiting neighbor.  This means sticking to one neighborhood for the majority of your stay.  Borrowing a bike and exploring on foot.  Visiting the same juice bar each morning.  Learning which way’s north.

Secure homebase

I’m a big fan of Hotel Tonight, the app that allows you to make reduced-cost purchases after noon from underbooked hotels, but leading up to my trip, a few test-runs showed that apparently more and more people are becoming fans, too, and reducing availability.  Selections had decreased and prices were higher. My “Travel Local” idea needed a home base, so I did some Yelping and found a Lower East Side HoJo in Chinatown. I picked Chinatown for its proximity to the Williamsburg bridge, and the “stay downtown, darling” advice of Gala Darling in her Love and Sequins chapter #11,
“It’s up to you, New York, New York.” Luckily, too.  The night I arrived in NYC, I checked Hotel Tonight in my taxi to Chinatown, and found that a sports game had reduced availability and upped prices.  Homebase secured!  I win this round.

Daily deli

So Chinatown was my new home, a place where unloading of edibles seems to happen each morning, and the summer trash is particularly offensive, reeking of chicken asshole and putrid fish guts. My first night, I discovered a 24 hour deli right on my block that made juices and smoothies.  24 hours a day.  For five dollars.  This type of thing does not exist in the twelve-dollar smoothieland that is Los Angeles.  The Highline Deli became my daily stop, where the counter guys and I made friends:  they made custom smoothies, pointed me to subway stops, and one night, as I experienced 3am drunk starvation shame, whipped up the most epic veggie and chicken wrap I’ve ever eaten.  Imagine a drunk food better than tacos.  This was it.  (Tacos are my heart, so that’s saying something.)

Request friendly favors

Asking for something is the only way to receive it.  I’m independent to a fault.  But a quote from Neal Donald Walsch inspired me on this trip:  “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”  I asked friends for help, and I got it:  a borrowed bike, helmet, introductions to new friends,  IRL meetups with Internet friends, recommendations and invitations.  I even got touristy with the HoJo staff, who were massively helpful in spreading out a giant subway map and giving me tips to navigate the city.  A spread-out map is my biggest fear—I’m a shitty navigator and I HATE getting lost/ asking for directions—so this was pushing my comfort zone to the hilt.

Bike, bike, bike

I love biking. Especially on vacation. Cycling through the city is the perfect pace.  You acknowledge your surroundings with every layer of attention:  acutely aware (what are the drivers like out here?), contemplative (the light off that building is beautiful), logistical (OK, right in two blocks, then a left at the fork).  Interaction is easier on a bike than on the street, and you can jump off to redirect your trajectory at any moment, if a sexy person, awesome shop, or enticing bar crosses your path.  One thing I wouldn’t recommend:  Citibikes.   They’re unwieldy, top-heavy, confusing, and you have to check them in every hour. Not worth it.  Borrow a freaking bike from a local, or rent a real city road bike.

Go public

I am terrible with directions.  And I’ve tried every psychological/ brain-training trick possible to change this, but invariably, I blank out when hearing directions, forget them immediately, and have no sense of north.  This is my tragedy, and it makes public transportation most epic—the wrong bus, once entered, can send me down a rabbit hole of confusion and frustration.  Pushing past my comfort zone, I MAKE MYSELF TAKE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION.  Even in Japan, where my grasp on the language was basic at best, my taxi-loving friend was forced to battle the complex subway fare system, tunnels, and connections with me. Conquering public
transportation in JAPAN (drunk, at that) is like winning American Ninja
Warrior.  So in NYC, I took subways and buses when off-bike.  Sure, most people there do, but that’s the Travel Local experience.

Neighborhood watch

Another reason biking is the best—I covered more ground than simply walking, and if (when) I got confused, circling a block on wheels makes you look like someone who’s into exercising, as opposed to someone who’s hopelessly lost and looking to be mugged.  At night, I’d cruise around the Lower East Side, making notes on cool restaurants to visit next day, stopping into bars, striking up conversations, and then riding home to HoJo.  You see the same people nightly, they open up.  Familiarity drives affinity.  It’s why we see the same commercial for yogurt 20 times during Passions, and why your favorite bar is the one where you get free drinks.  By my last NYC night, I was getting free drinks.

Drop-in FTW

Being in Chinatown, I knew there would be some killer cheap massage action.  Right on my block was Rich Feet… Rich Feet, where for $30 and an hour, you get a foot and leg massage that rubs the New York pavement’s abuse into submission.  Down Allen Street was Marie Nails, where I practiced Japanese with a sweet manicurist who turned my nails into bejeweled works of art.  Every lunch, I found a new place, dropped in, headed for the bar, and talked shit to the bartender, bar neighbor, or both.  Bartender Andrew, above, and his superfab servers were my favorites, getting me drunk and giving me info on their Uptown neighborhood, post Museum of Sex visit.

Be a neighbor

Part of traveling local is meeting the locals. My favorite conversations happened with people I ran into purely by coincidence.  One person I met randomly knew a person I met the next week in Chicago.  One teenager I struck up a conversation with at Pitchfork Chicago was the cousin of an ad-world friend I’ve hung with in Los Angeles.  Randomly.  How amazing is that?  It’s a habit I plan to continue in my real Los Angeles life. Just this week, at a comedy show, solo, I struck up a conversation with the man next to me, who happened to work in my industry, and big shocker:  we have multiple friends in common.  Break your monotony.  Open your eyes.  Look at the person next to you.  Say hello. The two of you have more in common than any other people on earth at this moment. Traveling local makes the world a smaller community, and a better place.

Live, learn, and say hello,

suzymae