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I love it when my friends visit New York. With this comic I don't mean to suggest people who visit the city are jerks; it's just very, very hard to persuade them to come to Brooklyn.
Speaking of visiting, are you going to the MoCCA Festival this weekend? I'll be exhibiting there with my Pizza Island buddies. Come say hello! I'll be selling a few things and signing books. We're also doing a panel on Sunday at 2:30. It'll be great, c'mon!
67 thoughts on “#457 – manhattan-bound”
Fission
Are those LCD Soundsystem lyrics in the alt text I see? :3
hobotron
RIP LCD Soundsystem :[
oceans
but their music still lives on…! dance yrself clean
Nemo
But. It is. So. Easy. To get to Brooklyn. I live in Minneapolis and I do it all the time! Come on, people.
RandomWebcomicsJunki
Maybe it's less about how easy it is and more about how scary it is? Manhattan can seem "safer" to some people.
Daarvin
I don't usually read / post comments (thusly don't know if anyone else has mentioned), but man, the text is great. Somehow yer handwriting perfectly fits the general mood of your drarrin's. Whimsy!
@aquaticambience
hey now! brooklyn is FAR!
before I moved out of the city, I lived near columbia, while a good friend lived in park slope, and going between my place and his felt like an epic journey…
gormster
Man, NYC is one of the biggest cities in the world, and the amount of bitching I heard from them about the INCREDIBLY short distances they had to travel was UNBELIEVABLE. Brooklyn? Far? Getting from my sister's place in Prospect Heights to lower Manhattan took, like, 30 minutes.
Seriously. Grow up, New York. My commute is 26 miles, about 2 hours on public transport. Brooklyn is 7 miles from Central Park.
@aquaticambience
Then maybe it's just a function of my neighborhood, because Columbia is also 30 minutes away from Lower Manhattan. Columbia to Park Slope can take over an hour, depending on the subway.
funk
I didn't have to persuade my visiting friends to go to Brooklyn, we ended up there by accident one night! Try that next time.
Serge
Brooklyn is awesome, anyone who doesn’t want to visit Brooklyn doesn’t know what fun is.
Clam
Sometime in the future, there should be an Octopus Pie Guide to Brooklyn.
Arkadi
I'll second that ^^
@supernikkidee
ohmygosh, yes.
@typicalspoon
hehe, i like how the crew is in the same blocking configuration in the subway and the bar.
hobotron
Oh, city bars. It's pretty much the same in DC. In Maryland and Virginia the bars aren't too crowded, but in the district even the "dives" are loud and busy. Really, there's no real reason to go to a city bar if you can just hang out and drink at a friend's apartment.
hobotron
P.S. – I love how even without being able to hear the whole conversation everyone in the room knows where it's going by panel 3.
oceans
and also because brickskellers no longer exists… 🙁
jimmy
Yeah man, the district's the worst. Plus the subways shut down around midnight.
@Sabresister42
Tell that to my friends who keep wanting to go out to bars in Boston on Friday nights :
Craig
Haha, I am the opposite whenever I visit NY. If people suggest we stay in manhattan I get uncomfortable. I hop on the L as soon as I can. However, I felt exactly like this comic when I lived in Budapest, because I was on the Buda side of the danube, and none of my american friends would come visit me, even though it would take less than 15 minutes to get to my place. I was just "too far away".
Nat
I've only visited New York once, but I loved how easy it was to get everywhere by public transit. Where I live you have to either bike, walk or drive if you want to get anywhere.
wykstrad
Each of those drinks cost something like 12 dollars.
Victoria
Oh my god, I need a print of this. Or five.
Mayday
hm, I wish I could read that price-list in the background
and I like Marigold's lady-fauxhawk do!
Kelly
Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that! I didn't recognize that as Marigold. Yay, continuity! But an example of potential discontinuity – who are these mutual friends of everyone's who live out of town? I thought that Eve and Hanna had separate friend circles that only since they started living together have begun to merge? Mutual preschool friends that they both kept up with?
StephenM3
I think that was years ago now. They've been roommates for a while, and have a mutual social circle built from shared experiences!
notmarkflynn
I can't make out the rest, but the top one says "Well drinks – $15" which is a good reason to leave right then and there.
David
I see $15 (Well Drop?), $40 (Mr. Apple?), $50 (Rum?). Sounds about right.
AsMC
The cast is looking absolutely adorable. I am 100% in love with Marigold's hair.
Rob S.
How hard is it to get to 14th Street, really? The L is painfully simple. It's the R that pisses me off.
Matt S.
The L is sooo slow, though. Commuting on the R is way easier.
Rob S.
I dunno, man. I recall reading most of "The Silmarillion" while waiting at Herald Square on a Saturday morning for an R to arrive.
notmarkflynn
I live in Broad Channel, just north of Rockaway and it's impossible to get other people who live in northern Queens to visit. Sure it's fine for me to take three different buses and a train to see them, but they almost all have frigging cars and never come over.
bradydale
I have never lived in NYC, tho I am DYING to. And I want to live in Brooklyn. When I come, I pretty much always stay in Brooklyn and this whole "we can't possibly leave Manhattan thing" drives me craaaaaaaazzy. Manhattan is not nearly as fun as Brooklyn and it is always so LOUD and STRESSY there.
I mean, I love new york. Love it, love it, love it… but, yeah, I'd come to the hanging out at the house thing you had cooking in those first panels in a second!
I just can't believe all those Brooklynites were willing to leave and go to Manhattan. Sheesh.
Meghan
This concept applies in LA too. People come here and A) choose a weird place to stay then complain about how far everything cool is, B) refuse to walk or take the Metro then complain about all the driving required, C) ignore my suggestions of places to go then bitch about the lame bar/club/restaurant/beach/tourist-trap they opted for.
Lesson: when you visit someone else's town, it's way more fun if you let them guide your shiz. Taking the subway to Brooklyn is always the best choice.
Ironica
As another Angeleno, I have to say, yeah, that. Though most of our friends are cheap, so they stay with us, and therefore go where we tell them to. 😉 But we intentionally chose a house in a walkable neighborhood with easy transit access… there's like four decent places to go have a drink within an easy stumble. And yet, family-friendly at the same time.
Drew
The looks of disgust and disappointment in the last pannel are the best part.
norm
I am guilty of this crime. Guilty! 🙁
chris
I probably shouldn't be as excited about Marigold's hair as I am, but… well.
Man, I have this problem even in Brooklyn, but I'm probably just not going to the right places.
Carly
EHHH!
I'm moving out to NYC for Graduate school this fall. I want to live in Brooklyn so I can have a garden (and maybe bee hive!) and a more chillax environment. Am I going to hate my 35-45 minute commute to the Museum of Natural History (where my school is) in a couple of months?
Will people come and visit me?….maybe my chances will be better with a backyard.
OHGODHOWDOIEVENFINDAPLACE.
helpmewebcomicpeoples
Colin
I'm moving to NYC for grad school this fall too! I'll be at the Bard Graduate Center, which is like two blocks from the Museum of Natural History. High five, nerdy museum-related programs!
I hope you get to live your Brooklyn beekeeping dreams. I have a feeling I'm going to be yearning for a garden after a while; I'll be living in Midtown. Naturally, most of my friends live in Brooklyn, so I might be guilty of reenacting this comic from time to time. I promise to try to go to them as much as they come to me.
I believe this problem's even worse if you live in [mock shudder] Jersey. My poor friend in Jersey City is, like, 20 minutes from Manhattan, but she might as well live in Ohio to hear the Manhattanites tell it.
Annie
As someone who has an hour commute every day to school in the middle of Tokyo, you get used to it real fast. Luckily I only have to take one train.
Argh!
I know literally 1 thing about NY geography, and it's unrelated, but I still know those two are complete tossers and I hate them forever.
SamuraiArtGuy
ARRRRGHHHH!!! LIVED this.
I commuted to the city most of my professional life, about an hour and a half from Coney Island. And my Manhattan locked friends treated us Brooklyn folk like we lived on the dark side of the Moon. I swear, mentally and emotionally, LA is closer than the outer boroughs to Manhattanites. Even the local language supports it… "going into The City" strictly refers to Manhattan, as if the rest of the city didn't count. Hardly anyone EVER visited up out in Coney Island. Which was actually a pretty nice community.
I now reside in the northwestern suburb of Rockland county, the first county north of the Jersey border. We're 20 min to the George Washington Bridge. But my city peeps are clueless, "Rockland? That's like up by Albany, right?"
I know I'm being a jerk, but this sort of stuff makes me feel that Manhanttanites (not New Yorkers per se ) are spoiled, elitist pricks.
ARRRRGHHHH!!!
MacSimon
Hey, it's me again.
I have a friend in Washington DC that says he could get me the book ("There're no stars in brooklyn") there and send it to my mother (It'd be so much easier if she was around for MocCa), do you think it's easier to find over there?
MacSimon
i got the book. I GOT THE BOOK!!
YES YES YES YES!!!
Bumble B
when you mentioned the Mocca festival I thought you meant Museum of Contemperary Canadian art…Which is literally attached to my school. Damn!
Damien Walder
Animating at Mutt? Toronto in the house…
ChimmyChimTim
Poor Marek, my heart goes out to you in panel three. Your one sad Panda-Marek.
Great work as always!
fluffy
Man, the L. That was the bane of my existence while I lived in Ridgewood and worked in Manhattan. DO NOT MISS.
spas
i go to NYC every thanksgiving-time on business. i have been those tourists, but LAST time, i DID go to brooklyn and it was pretty cool – and truly not hard to get to – i will do it again next time. went to some bar with an unpronounceable foreign name with a wide selection of beer on tap, a vintage clothing shop that was so overpriced my jaw hit the floor and an amazing chinese restaurant with charming staff and fellow guests. my friends there are artists and whatnot and super-fun, but i must say Florencia 13 in the village is still my favorite place for drinks with friends. and El Diablo my favorite restaurant in the City, so the village is pretty amazing. it's not so bad to come from brooklyn to the village…so i feel like eve & her friends' attitudes could also use improvement!
@rdi
I love the expression changes between panels 2 and 3.
kim
Oh my goodness, I love how Marigold's hair is growing out.
hal
the change in body language and facial expressions from panels 2 to 3 is priceless. is "but" or "brooklyn" the trigger word?
Damien Walder
RE: drinking in Brooklyn, staying in Manhattan – over the years I was just grateful to get a cab back after the trains stopped running. Now I have friends with guest space IN Brooklyn it's fantastic to hang out with them – with no worries about the L until it's plane time…
@pizzaUNOFFICIAL
Man Savannah ain't got shit to do but at least no one complains about getting anywhere.
Mental Mouse
Been there, happens for Queens too.
Stuart
I wandered about the MoCCA hall but didn't know to look for you. There was some interesting stuff.
(No panels for me tomorrow though, gotta play Circle Rules)
@RayLeona
HISSSSS Brooklyn is so scawy!! There are minorities there!!!
matt w
I love the shift between panels 2 and 3.
Sometimes I don't even get into Manhattan at all when I'm visiting the city, though getting from Queens (where I stay) to Brooklyn (where lots of my friends are) can still be annoying. The G train? Also last time we tried to drive to Park Slope they had reversed the direction of all the one-way streets or something.
Samara
Ugh. This so much! But it can be just as hard getting Brooklyn friends to venture into Manhattan. I live in Fort Greene, which is pretty much a stone's throw away from Manhattan, and if I ever what to meet someone friends in Manhattan for a night of the bar crawl, my Brooklyn friends act like I'm asking them to trek Everest.
Jade Carver
I really don't get this one. Probably because I've never been to the U.S.
Narf
NYC (New York City) has five boroughs: Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn and The Bronx. This comic is illustrating the fact that it's (apparently) difficult to persuade people who are visiting NYC to come to your place if said place is in one of the outer boroughs (like Brooklyn), because most visitors to the city tend to want to stay in Manhattan. 😛
This lesson in NY geography brought to you by Narf, your friendly world travelin' Canadian. 😛
Antiquated Tory
Very similar to North London Disease.
@AGuyNamedCarl
Dear Brooklynites,
I'd visit you in Brooklyn.
Love,
Someone you don't actually know
Marie
Next time I got to NY, I'm *definitely* going to Brooklyn.