I have not missed my little ol’ Toyota quite as much as I did last night. While traffic sucks your soul out of you when your commuting to work in LA, it’s actually quite nice to drive around at night. You get to any destination you’d like whenever you like, and if there’s any detours you must take, at least you’re in the safety of your car. If you feel slightly unsafe at any given moment, all you need to do is step on the gas to hightail out of wherever.

In New York, unless you’re extremely rich and/or lucky, there’s no way you can even afford to keep a car. There’s no parking anywhere unless you want to pay the equivalent of my entire college tuition just for one year’s parking fees. So no matter what, you’re stuck with public transportation or cabs. When you’re an unemployed “writer”/ex-lab tech, you forgo all luxuries, including cabs.

The 6 Train

So where was I last night? Between the hours of 1 am to 3 am, I was in-transit. Yes, it took me two hours to get from Hell’s Kitchen to East Harlem. Two whole friggin hours! Most of it involved waiting in a stuffy urine soaked subway platform! One station actually had a drunk bum who refused to get up! Another bum was seriously just chillaxing on the steps just because!

The worst part, Hell’s Kitchen is not even THAT far from East Harlem – it’s just that both areas are somewhat out of the way AND it sucks anytime you have to go crosstown. Judging by the lack of traffic on surface streets, it would have taken no more than 10-15 minutes to get home IF I HAD A CAR. But no, between the lack of trains that run in the middle of the night to track closures due to maintenance, it took me 2 hours just to get home.

LATHER Bamboo Lemongrass Foaming Body Scrub ($68 for 16 oz. on lather.com)

I need a really really a good soak and scrub to get all that Subway hobo grime off me. Unfortunately I left my luxe goodies in LA, so instead of scrubbing myself with LATHER’s Bamboo Lemongrass Foaming Body Scrub that’s formulated with exfoliating powdered bamboo and walnut shell and precious essential oils, I’ve got bar soap. And a Japanese mesh body scrubby towel to go with my bar soap. How I’d die to just smell that invigorating scent of the Bamboo Lemongrass scrub. It’s refreshing without being overpowering, and most of it, it just scrubs off life’s dirty grime off your body to renew your entire self being from inside out.

*My sister will most likely get on a plane to NYC to reprimand me after reading this, but hey, it’s New York, a city that never sleeps!