You’ve heard the adage: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice.” While these are straightforward and reliable directions, here’s how to get to a few other New York City landmarks.
How to get to Madison Square Garden: Practice, then pander.
How to get to Music Hall of Williamsburg: Practice, check into rehab for heroin addiction, practice some more.
How to get to Broadway: Practice until your voice, body, and the stage become one.
How to get to Off-Broadway: Practice until the daring, the avant-garde, and the alienating become one.
How to get to Central Park: Practice, but only saxophone.
How to get to Mt. Sinai Hospital: Give up your artistic aspirations to please your strict parents.
How to get to the Natural History Museum: Roam, ravage, and scavenge the earth circa the Mesozoic Era, and—right before the big rock hits—lock your big fingers together so the metacarpals entomb in a crossed position for good luck, because the rest of the journey isn’t up to you.
How to get to the United Nations: Quickest route—violate human rights. Scenic route—uphold them.
How to get to Times Square: Fly to Japan and ask them what to do in New York City.
How to get to the High Line: Steer steam-powered locomotives above traffic until the freight industry steers away from you (and towards trucks and commercial jets). Then wait to catch the gaze of an urban design grad who aced his classes but smoked a little pot on the weekends.
How to get to NYU: Tell your parents to make more money.
How to get to IKEA: See a psychiatrist, complain of decision-making anxiety, get prescribed exposure therapy.
How to get to Penn Station: Crawl inside a Bud Light can on March 17th, wait to be regurgitated.
How to get to M&M’s World: Get married, procreate, but keep your demanding careers so you’re too tired to exert any will-power over your kids’ increasingly absurd appetites for sweets and stimulation.
How to get to the Museum of Sex: Frantically search for something on discount.
How to get to the Statue of Liberty: Be a Statue of Liberty.
How to get to LaGuardia Airport: Depart from LaGuardia Airport on Spirit Airlines.
How to get to the New York Transit Museum: Take any subway. They’re all antiquated.
How to get to Starbucks: Follow directions to Carnegie Hall. Statistically, you’ll wind up there.